Cost of EU Agencies Triples to More Than £2 Billion
The cost of funding European Union committees and agencies has more than tripled since 2005 and is on course to reach more than £2 billion next year, new research shows.
Compiled by Open Europe, the figures come as David Cameron prepares to go to Brussels this week to fight off plans to increase the overall budget of the EU by six per cent.
The Prime Minister has made clear that he considers that it is unacceptable for British taxpayers to pay more to Europe at a time when widespread spending cuts are being imposed at home.
As well as an increase in overall spending, the European Commission has proposed introducing an eight per cent rise in the 2011 budget for EU agencies and committees.
It would be used to open five new agencies, as well as boosting the budgets for 47 existing organisations, which together employ nearly 10,000 people.
Siân Herbert, of Open Europe, said: “The huge increase in the cost of EU agencies stands in stark contrast to the deep cuts facing the public sector in member states. It’s rather unbelievable that the EU remains immune from the austerity measures sweeping the rest of Europe.”
Among the agencies which Open Europe suggests closing are the Economic and Social Committee, which has a proposed 2011 budget of £124 million, the Committee of the Regions, with a proposed budget of £81 million next year.
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Economist Slams US Attempts to Curb Germany’s Export Strength
The US would like countries like Germany that export far more than they import to curb those surpluses in a bid to reduce global trade imbalances. But according to American economist Michael Burda, doing that would only be punishing Germany for having put its economic house in order.
SPIEGEL: What do you think of US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s proposal that countries keep their current-account balance under 4 percent of gross domestic product, both for deficits and surpluses?
Michael Burda: I think that interventions of this sort are unreasonable and unworkable. One can not resolve global imbalances by imposing penalties. Such measures are unsuitable for achieving that goal.
SPIEGEL: What does the proposal mean for Germany, which runs a current-account surplus as a result of its strength as an exporter?
Burda: Germany would effectively be punished for its efforts in recent years to regain its competitiveness, which can help explain why German products are selling like hotcakes on the global market. I would also find it strange to see other countries being rewarded for not having put their own house in order.
SPIEGEL: The US treasury secretary is proposing that Germany reduces its reliance on exports, for example by boosting domestic demand with the help of tax breaks…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Concedes IMF Seats in ‘Historic’ Shake-Up
Europe has conceded its overrepresentation within the structure of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), allowing emerging nations a louder voice and a real place at the table on the board of the organisation set up some 60 years ago to oversee the world’s financial system.
Finance ministers at the Group of 20 nations summit in Gyeongjiu, South Korea, on Saturday (23 October) agreed to the changes, which will see a shift in five to six percent of the votes within the institution toward “dynamic, emerging economies,” such as China, India and Brazil, and Europe give up two of its seats on the IMF executive board.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU is on Another Planet
BARKING Brussels politicians have proved they live on another planet by pouring millions of pounds into the pointless European space programme.
As millions of Britons faced swingeing cuts, the draft EU budget reveals an extra £23million will be spent on space research next year, taking the annual total to £204million.
Nigel Farage, frontrunner to lead the UK Independence Party, last night described the draft budget as proof that Brussels had lost touch with reality. He said: “The idea of sending eurocrats into orbit has its charms but £23million extra for space research is bizarre.
“Will the first EU space rocket have gold-plated taps and marble flooring? It seems our eurocrats have finally got off the Brussels gravy train and boarded Starship Excess.”
The 500-page draft was rubber-stamped by MEPs on the same day that Chancellor George Osborne was pulling Britain back from the brink of financial ruin with an £81billion cut in state spending.
The EU document is unapologetic about the 13 per cent increase in next year’s European space programme from £181million to £204million.
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EU Makes a Fresh Grab for Control of Our Budgets
A move to drag Britain into ‘deeper economic and monetary union’ with the rest of the EU is being planned in Brussels, it emerged last night.
European President Herman Van Rompuy intends to use a report on the economic crisis to press for sweeping reforms that will ‘strengthen economic governance in the EU’.
The former Belgian prime minister will present the findings of his six-month task force on the economy to EU leaders, including David Cameron, later this week.
But a leaked copy of his conclusions reveals that he hopes to use the crisis to make an audacious power grab.
The report will call for the European Commission to be given surveillance powers to monitor the budgets of all EU members states.
Brussels will also be given powers to issue swingeing fines against countries which are deemed to be borrowing too much money.
‘Their implementation will provide the necessary impetus towards deeper economic and monetary union,’ the report says.
It also calls for ‘greater fiscal discipline’ by member states and ‘deeper and broader co-ordination’ of economic policy by member states.
It had been thought that the new powers would apply exclusively to countries that are members of the single currency. But Mr Van Rompuy’s conclusions say that the measures will apply to ‘the EU and the euro area’.
Mr Van Rompuy also suggests that ministers should sidestep calls for a new treaty and try to force through the new measures using existing powers under the Lisbon Treaty.
France and Germany indicated last week that they want a new EU treaty to deal with the fallout from the economic crisis, which has seen EU countries pledge hundreds of billions of pounds to prop up faltering economies like Greece.
The plans could even see countries with large budget deficits, such as the UK, have their voting rights suspended within the EU.
But Mr Van Rompuy’s report calls on ministers to adopt a ‘fasttrack approach’ and bring in the measures without a new treaty which could require referendums in several countries, including the UK.
Any move to force through significant changes without a referendum would provoke fury on the Tory right. Bill Cash, Tory chairman of the Commons’ European scrutiny committee, last night described the proposals as ‘completely unacceptable’.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Greece Likely to Default by 2013 as Debts Remain, El-Erian Says
Greece is likely to default over the next three years because budget-cutting won’t be enough to reduce the nation’s debt burden, Pacific Investment Management Co. Chief Executive Officer Mohamed A. El-Erian said.
It’s in Greece’s interest to default “as long as you can contain the contagion to other countries and it is done through orderly restructuring and repricing to retain competitiveness,” El-Erian said at a conference sponsored by the Economist magazine in New York yesterday. Like Latin America’s “lost decade” in the 1980s, “the alternative doesn’t promise growth and employment generation,” he said.
The extra yield, or spread, investors demand to hold Greek debt instead of similar-maturity German bonds jumped to a two- week high today. The European Union and International Monetary Fund approved a 110 billion-euro ($153 billion) aid package on May 2 in exchange for Greece agreeing to cut public-sector wages and pensions and raise taxes on fuel, alcohol and cigarettes.
“Greek bonds have been under pressure since El-Erian’s comments,” said Orlando Green, assistant director of capital- markets strategy at Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank in London. “The near-term picture doesn’t look so bad for Greece, but it’s a long journey ahead.”
Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis erupted at the end of 2009 after Greece’s newly elected socialist government said the budget deficit was twice as big as the previous administration disclosed. Irish, Portuguese and Spanish bonds slumped on concern that Greece’s crisis would be followed by other fiscal problems on Europe’s periphery.
‘Heroic’ Target
The Bank of Greece today said the nation must push ahead with its deficit-reduction plan. “Fiscal consolidation must now move at a much faster pace, with drastic limitation in public- sector waste,” the central bank said in an e-mailed report.
Prime Minister George Papandreou has promised austerity measures amounting to 11 percent of gross domestic product, according to IMF data.
“I have never seen an 11 percent adjustment on the fiscal side being delivered” under the current program’s assumptions, said El-Erian, who worked at the IMF for 15 years. “Eleven percent is heroic.”
Greek bonds slid today, pushing the 10-year yield up 30 basis points to 9.65 percent at 10:55 a.m. in London.
Investors demand 717 basis points, or 7.2 percent, more yield to hold 10-year Greek bonds than they do to hold benchmark German bunds. That spread jumped above 700 basis points today for the first time since Oct. 8.
Default Swaps
Credit-default swaps protecting Greek government bonds for five years cost 668.5 basis points, according to CMA in London today. Swap prices surged before the May rescue plan and had eased since then, suggesting Papandreou’s austerity measures had bought the country time to reduce a budget deficit that’s more than four times the European Union’s limit.
The EU estimated Greece’s 2009 deficit at 13.6 percent of gross domestic product, the bloc’s highest after Ireland, and projects a shortfall this year of 7.8 percent of GDP.
“The fiscal adjustment that Greece needs to do is unprecedented,” Giada Giani, senior European economist at Citigroup Inc., said at a conference in Brussels today. “There is a limit to the amount of fiscal tightening a country can bear and support without the tightening becoming self-defeating, so detrimental for economic growth that it doesn’t really deliver an improvement.”
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Hundreds of Thousands to Lose Jobless Benefits
Inquiring minds are upon California this morning. With a week to go before The (formely) Golden State elects a governor to lead it out of the mess created by 40+ years of Democrat rule, Californians have a choice to make. A tax and spend liberal who embarrassed the state 30 years ago or a self-made billionaire who has created an iconic company and tens of thousands of well paying jobs who has vowed to tackle the major issue of the state. The choice could not be more clear.
Now comes a new report by the National Employment Law Project where nearly 226,000 Californians, more people than in all of Irvine, CA, are expected to lose unemployment benefits during the holidays if Congress fails to approve a continuation of aid after the current law expires Nov. 30:…
| — Hat tip: Bobbo | [Return to headlines] |
Make Them Agree to Kill the Death Tax
As election day approaches and many incumbents contemplate the death of their political careers, it’s a good time to remind them of their unfinished work in fending off a massive tax increase, and in particular, the death tax. In fact, they should be hounded about this at every campaign stop.
The death tax was reduced to zero in 2010, but will lurch from its grave on January 1, 2011, and haunt small businesses worth $1 million or more. The 55 percent rate, if not repealed, will destroy many family-owned enterprises. While tax-hungry liberals lick their chops at this Soviet-style confiscatory scheme, ordinary Americans should ask politicians why they want to hobble the only sure job-creating sector in a time of nearly 10 percent unemployment. Actually, it’s worse. When you add the people who gave up looking and those working only part time, we’re talking 17 percent.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Thomas Sowell: Is Barney Frank?: Part II
Among long-time politicians who are being seriously challenged for the first time this election year, Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts best epitomizes the cynical ruthlessness which hides behind their lofty rhetoric.
Having been a key figure in promoting the risky mortgage lending practices imposed by the federal government on lenders, and on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy these risky mortgages from the lenders, Barney Frank blamed the resulting collapse of financial markets and the economy on everybody except Barney Frank.
[…]
These were not just idle words. The dirty little secret that few in the media seem to want to discuss is that community activists, including Jesse Jackson, have over the years extracted literally billions of dollars from financial institutions, as the price of peace and of not challenging these institutions in hearings before federal regulators, as these groups are empowered to do under the Community Reinvestment Act.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Generation With ‘No Hope’ Will Turn to Gangs and Crime as Jobs Become Scarce, Warns Police Chief
A generation of young people with ‘no hope’ will be tempted by crime and gangs as the jobs market shrinks, a leading policeman has warned.
Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, says rising unemployment and lack of opportunity could lead to more law-breaking on the streets.
He claimed that crime will be more appealing than education to youngsters if there are no job opportunities.
Mr Fahy said: ‘The level of crime is not just affected by urban policing.
‘Our concern would be the wider impact of not just a rise in unemployment but a generation of young people that don’t see much hope.
‘They find what gang members and drug dealers are up to more attractive than going to college if they think that they are not going to get a job at the end of it.’
The force has braced itself to lose 16 per cent of its budget over the next four years under the government’s spending review.
A total of 40,000 jobs are set to go across Greater Manchester as part of an £83bn economy drive that will also hit schools, councils, transport, pensions and welfare.
Mr Fahy said early intervention and more imaginative ways of tackling crime would be crucial in the years ahead.
He said he was frustrated by a government obsession with league tables and performance.
‘There is a gap between that and what the public want,’ he said. ‘Do the people of Greater Manchester think it is safe to walk the streets, and take their kids into parks?
‘Do women students feel they can come into the city centre and walk its streets without being mugged?
‘If they don’t, then all statistics are useless. We have not won that argument with the government yet.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rodent Boom After Rat Catcher Cull as One in Ten Councils No Longer Provides Pest Control
The plummeting number of pest control staff is leaving streets and homes at risk of being overrun by rats, mice and bed-bugs, experts warned last night.
One in ten councils no longer provides a pest control service and the problem is getting worse.
Just eight years ago, only one in 100 had no pest control department, said the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health.
Over the same period, councils have pushed up charges for eradicating rats, mice, bed-bugs and lice as well as cutting back on the range of pests they target.
Tim Everett, of the Institute, said the survey of 258 councils in England and Wales was ‘particularly worrying’ as the impact of last week’s budget cuts had yet to be felt.
He added the remaining pest control units looked ‘very vulnerable’ as councils were not required by law to provide the service. Pugh vermin.jpg
‘The people most likely to lose out are those of limited incomes,’ said Mr Everett. ‘It could lead to much higher pest populations and increase the spread of diseases. This is basic public health stuff.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Author Jonathan Franzen Meets With Obama at White House
Jonathan Franzen, the bestselling author, met with President Obama this afternoon, White House officials said.
Obama received an advanced reader’s copy of Franzen’s most recent book, “Freedom,” while on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard over Labor Day weekend. He reportedly set off a small firestorm in the publishing world when other booksellers thought the bookstore, Bunch of Grapes, had sold him the book — which would have violated the embargo.
Franzen won critical acclaim for his third novel, “The Corrections,” for which he won a National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. He has earned media attention before after expressing hesitation at being included in Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club. He was quoted as saying he didn’t want the “logo of corporate ownership” on the book, and portrayed by some as an ivory tower elitist — an image that Obama himself has struggled to shake.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Bizarre Halloween Jack O’Lantern Pumpkins Carved by Ray Villafane
As Halloween approaches, you may be thinking of carving your own Jack O’Lantern out of a pumpkin. American Ray Villafane takes pumpkin carving to another level. Drawing on his background in art and his work in designing models for DC and Marvel comics, Ray sculpts intricate horrific faces out of pumpkins. His carvings look like gothic gargoyles in keeping with the theme of the popular holiday. “The most intricate pumpkin model that I have designed is the Zipperhead model, which took the best part of a day. Otherwise, the models take a couple of hours,” he says.
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Ehrhard: Moderate Muslims Share Fears
Three years ago, my husband and I were walking through London’s Heathrow Airport on the way to our honeymoon in Italy. Men in the traditional Islamic garb of Saudi Arabia were walking through the security checkpoints behind us.
To my surprise, my husband, a man who was raised by an observant Muslim mother, stopped to watch as they went through security. He wanted to make sure the employees checked each man thoroughly. My husband had just returned from his homeland of Iraq, where he had been working as an Arabic translator with U.S. soldiers. When my husband saw certain Muslim garb, he naturally felt nervous.
His niece, an observant Muslim who fasts during Ramadan even though it leaves her parched and tired at work, feels nervous when she sees men whose appearance expresses extreme Muslim observance, such as men with a long, thick beards without mustaches. While she lived in Iraq, she learned to fear those who wanted to imitate most closely seventh-century norms of dress. Why? One day when she was in a salon in Baghdad, men came in and told her in threatening tones that her dress was “un-Islamic.” They told her she needed to change her clothes or she would “be punished.” She never understood why. She was wearing the hijab and covering her arms and legs. The men waited for her in a car outside the salon. Out of fear, my niece called male relatives to come and pick her up. Now that she is in the United States, she will walk out of Starbucks, never mind an airplane, if she sees men dressed in Islamic styles associated with hard-line ideas, even though she knows the hard-liners in Iraq often dressed in Western clothes in order to blend in.
Is my husband or his niece anti-Muslim? Absolutely not, but they have been deeply scarred by the radicalism they witnessed in a majority Muslim land. They themselves would say that the majority of the Muslims they know are peaceful and loving people, but, like the bullies in a classroom, the extremists cause everyone to be on edge.
In Ed Husain’s excellent book, “The Islamist” (Penguin Global, 2008), the author describes how older and devoutly Muslim parents of Southeast Asian heritage in London feel nervous when their children adopt seventh-century Middle Eastern styles. Such dress is foreign to their heritage. The parents are not bigots. They are concerned with the radicalism the dress can sometimes indicate.
If these moderate Muslims can worry at the sight of certain expressions of Muslim dress, why then was Juan Williams fired for expressing a similar feeling? He was not proud of this feeling. He did not consider it a positive thing. If you watch the Fox News video in full, you see that he was actually trying to counter arguments that would portray all Muslims as radicals.
The question of what even qualifies as “Muslim garb” is a complicated one. For some Muslims, a proper Muslim woman should wear the nikab, the full-face covering that leaves only a slit in the eyes. Yet more moderate Muslim women find the nikab offensive. They feel uncomfortable when women wear it.
Juan Williams opened up a perfectly legitimate discussion by acknowledging uncomfortable feelings while at the same time insisting that it is wrong to paint all Muslims as extremists. Perhaps the upper management at NPR believes they are being more sensitive to Muslims than Mr. Williams by firing him. In truth, they are being more condescending to them.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
It’s Franzen’s World
To take this blog in a slightly esoteric direction (would I ever do that?), Jonathan Franzen’s trip to the White House today prompted a friend to point out a bit of a blindspot in Franzen’s new book, Freedom.
I thought the book was as good as everyone says it is, but that its rare weak spots came when it was doctrinaire in its liberalism. His caricatured Irving Kristol character took some deserved flack.
My friend emails that he was struck by the real-life echo in another scene, a political rant by one of the main characters, a little-known rocker named Richard Katz who has, in middle age, suddenly been embraced by the pop culture and is being interviewed by a young fan. The long interview in which former Velvet Underground Drummer Mo Tucker explained her appearance at Tea Party events was, my friend writes, “a carbon copy of a scene w/ the musician Richard Katz in Freedom.”
From Freedom:
Q: So what’s next for Richard Katz?
A: I’m getting involved in Republican politics.
Q: Ha ha.
A: … I’ve been given the opportunity to participate in the pop-music mainstream, and manufacture Chiclets, and help try to persuade fourteen-year-olds that the look and feel of Apple Computer products is an indication of Apple Computer’s commitment to making the world a better place. Because making the world a better place is cool, right? And Apple Computer must be way more committed to a better world, because iPods are so much cooler-looking than other MP3 players, which is why they’re so much more expensive and incompatible with other companies’ software, because-well, actually it’s a little unclear why, in a better world, the very coolest products have to bring the very most obscene profits to a tiny number of residents of the better world. This may be a case where you have to step back and take the long view and see that getting to have your very own iPod is itself the very thing that makes the world a better place. And that’s what I find so refreshing about the Republican Party. They leave it up to the individual to decide what a better world might be. It’s the party of liberty, right? That’s why I can’t understand why those intolerant Christian moralists have so much influence on the party. Those people are very antichoice. Some of them are even opposed to the worship of money and material goods. I think the iPod is the true face of Republican politics, and I’m in favor of the music industry …
Q: Seriously, though. … Do you think successful musicians have a responsibility to be role models?
A: Me me me, buy buy buy, party party party. …What I’ve been trying to say is that we already are perfect Republican role models.
The difference between Tucker and Katz, of course, is that Katz is at least half-joking, and Tucker is serious, which seems like something that, in a broader sense, the left is still reckoning with.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Jonathan Franzen Comes to the White House
Spotted leaving the White House Monday afternoon: Jonathan Franzen. Asked how his meeting with the president went, the celebrated author of “Freedom” said “delightful.”
During his Labor Day vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama was gifted with an early copy of Freedom.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Jonathan Franzen Stops by the White House
Jonathan Franzen was spotted leaving the White House this afternoon, where he had what he called a “delightful” meeting with the President, reports Jake Tapper.
Mr. Tapper — who just signed a book deal himself — notes that President Obama received an early copy of the author’s Freedom this summer at a Hamptons bookstore — a preview that caused a bit of a stir in the publishing community. The meeting wasn’t on the president’s pool schedule, but it looks like Mr. Franzen was squeezed in between an 11 a.m. meeting with Secretary of State Clinton and a 2:30 p.m. flight to Rhode Island for fundraising.
Perhaps the two discussed the upcoming midterm elections, as Mr. Franzen does in this video released by The Guardian today. In it, he says that as he was finishing Freedom he thought the country might be in for some kind of political change but isn’t hopeful for the elections because “now people left of the middle feel puzzled and sort of anguished because we don’t have an object for our anger but the right is still as angry as ever.”
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Jonathan Franzen: “America is Almost a Rogue State” [Video]
Jonathan Franzen talks to Sarfraz Manzoor about his new novel Freedom; the complexity of his friendship with fellow novelist David Foster Wallace, whose suicide partly triggered the book; and the ‘dull, throbbing anxiety’ of America’s liberal left
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Man Votes Republican, Machine Checks Democrats
‘If you’re in a hurry, you may just push the button and not notice it’
A Craven County voter says he had a near miss at the polls on Thursday when an electronic voting machine completed his straight-party ticket for the opposite of what he intended.
Sam Laughinghouse of New Bern said he pushed the button to vote Republican in all races, but the voting machine screen displayed a ballot with all Democrats checked. He cleared the screen and tried again with the same result, he said. Then he asked for and received help from election staff.
“They pushed it twice and the same thing happened,” Laughinghouse said. “That was four times in a row. The fifth time they pushed it and the Republicans came up and I voted.”
M. Ray Wood, Craven County Board of elections chairman, issued a written statement saying that the elections board is aware of isolated issues and that in each case the voter was able to cast his or her ballot as desired.
Chuck Tyson, chairman of Craven County GOP, remains skeptical. He has been communicating with Wood about the issue and was invited to a meeting Wednesday with state elections officials. There were no further details about that meeting.
“Something is not right here,” Tyson told the Sun Journal. He said he “got two or three calls” from people describing the same problem while they were voting.
“I’ll be matter of fact, I didn’t find that press release satisfactory,” Tyson said, referring to Wood’s written statement.
Tyson reported other problems as well, including long lines waiting for just two voting machines in Havelock, and machines reporting 250 ballots cast where 400 voters had signed in to vote.
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NPR CEO Vivian Schiller Key Architect of FCC Govt Takeover of the News
Last week, National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller took a break from her crusade for a government takeover of the media to swat a fly. With now-former NPR analyst Juan Williams suitably splattered across the evening news after politically incorrect comments he made on Fox News, Schiller can return to her real passion — the creation of a national network to ensure that in the future, you get your news from the government in general and NPR in particular.
Schiller could barely contain her rage at Fox News and at Williams last week, saying he should discuss his fear of boarding a plane with Muslim passengers with “his psychiatrist.” Those who understand what is at stake saw the Williams/Schiller dust up for what it really was — a declaration of war by one of the most powerful women in journalism against for-profit, non-liberal media. If Schiller and her liberal friends have their way, Fox and its viewers will pay the bill for her new government news network.
As Schiller explained in a speech to the NPR board of directors in 2009, it is public radio’s responsibility to fill the gap in journalism left by dying local television stations and newspapers.
Schiller, a former New York Times executive, is one of a few dozen power players working with the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and a leftist group called Free Press to “reinvent journalism.” That’s how the FTC describes it. The FCC calls what they are doing the “Future of Journalism.” Free Press, a think tank funded by leftist billionaire George Soros, among others, calls it “the new public media.”
It’s all the same thing, a plan to take over local news coverage from for-profit television, radio and print media, which Schiller and her friends claim is in danger of extinction. These “friends” get together regularly with the heads of the FCC and FTC to brainstorm the details in government and congressional meetings. These meetings include the leaders of all the country’s public broadcasting outlets, including PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and American Public Media.
They are beefing up their staffs in local news markets with herds of public news reporters to “take over” coverage as commercial media fails. Nationwide, this will cost $40 billion to $60 billion over a decade, they believe. Their plans, according to the FCC’s Future of Media report, are to raise this money by taxing for-profit news organizations — the ones whose reporting Schiller is supposedly trying to “save.” They want to charge “spectrum fees” of five percent of broadcast station revenues for use of the public spectrum and airwaves, which the government controls. They figure that could bring in $1.8 billion a year. A one percent tax on all electronic devices like cell phones, televisions and laptops could bring in billions more. So would a monthly fee on internet subscriptions.
While conservatives were busy arguing that NPR should be defunded in the wake of the Williams debacle, Schiller was putting the finishing touches on the national infrastructure NPR has launched to deliver this new government news product to cities across the nation. A decade ago, defunding NPR would have sufficed. To stop Schiller now, Republicans would have to defund PBS and CPB as well to have any hope of torpedoing her plans to build a nationwide news delivery system in the style of the BBC, but on steroids. Schiller imagines a national public print, television and radio news leviathan that would compete with the top five news companies in the news industry.
“We can create a national network around all of public radio that provides the kind of public service that is being not provided by other media companies that are suffering,” Schiller told Cyberjournalist.net. Never mind that her planned confiscation of their revenues will cause them more suffering and possibly send them to an early death.
Schiller calls her creation the Public Media Platform, and the left is very excited about it. It’s a digital network in partnership with all the nation’s public news providers, built to distribute their news locally, regionally and nationally. NPR has already built a state-of-the-art internal “wire” service in the style of the Associated Press to carry and distribute the news. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded seven multi-million dollar regional journalism centers with news teams to produce and distribute the new public news product.
Finally, NPR’s Project Argo has launched news sites at 12 NPR stations in major cities staffed with local reporters. That’s where Soros’s recent $1.8 million donation to NPR comes in. Those are start-up funds for the reporters to generate the public news product…
| — Hat tip: Wally Ballou | [Return to headlines] |
Reid Aide Lied to FBI … Repeatedly!!!
Another intellectual Leftist Democrat. They would never resort to petty personnel attacks.
Inquiring minds are upon Nevada tonight as a political earthquake rocks the state. NPR can’t report this since it is a Latina who lied repeatedly to the FBI about her marriage to a Lebanese national who was the subject of an Oklahoma City Joint Terror Task Force investigation:
Well, this should spice things up between now and the election. “An aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repeatedly lied to federal immigration and FBI agents and submitted false federal documents to the Department of Homeland Security to cover up her illegal seven-year marriage to a Lebanese national who was the subject of an Oklahoma City Joint Terror Task Force investigation, FoxNews.com has learned. . . . According to interviews and court records obtained by FoxNews.com, Tejada knowingly filed false documents with the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services; lied in in-person interviews with ICE and FBI agents; and submitted fraudulent visa application affidavits and marriage license documents — all in attempt to use her status as an American citizen to get Tarhini permanent residency.”
[…]
| — Hat tip: Bobbo | [Return to headlines] |
The “Dull and Throbbing” Anti-Americanism of Jonathan Franzen (The Guardian Interview)
Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections (2001), drew widespread critical acclaim, and earned Franzen a National Book Award
Adam Kirsch, writing a review of Franzen’s new book, Freedom, for The New Republic, noted several disturbing themes. Kirsch’s literary criticism includes demonstrating that the book:
“fictionalizes this left-wing conventional wisdom about [Jewish philosopher] Strauss, the Jews, and the Iraq war…Franzen is spreading it to a much wider audience-complete with images of a wizened, cranially distorted Jewish puppet master, who cynically chuckles about how “we” control the U.S. government from behind the scenes. That Franzen could uncritically reproduce this kind of imagery is a reminder of how ugly and obsessive the antiwar discourse sometimes became.”
Recently, Guardian correspondent Sarfraz Manzoor interviewed Franzen about his new novel, friendship, and American politics. While you should see the full interview for yourself, some of what Franzen says about America says as much about the Guardian as it does about Franzen.
Here are some highlights from the interview:
Manzoor: Some of the characters in Freedom speak quite positively about the European approach towards freedom and community and the ideas is (from your book) that people came to America for money and for freedom, and it almost seems that what you’re suggesting is that the U.S. fetishizes freedom and forgets that there are greater freedoms to be had by having [human] bonds.
Franzen: I’m at pains not to endorse any interpretation of my book but, believe me, this isn’t grating on my ears what you’re saying. In the last decade America has emerged even in its own estimation as a problem state. There are many criticisms one could make…like the treatment of the Indians…it goes way back…and our long relationship with slavery…and then the Cold War where we were certainly culpable, but the degree to which we are almost a rogue state and causing incredible trouble around the world in our attempts to preserve our freedoms to preserve our SUV’s…
His characterization of the U.S. as a rogue state is simply a perfect display of how the far-left goes beyond mere critiques of U.S. policy, descending into the naked anti-Americanism which has so much currency in the totalitarian world. With all his sophistication and erudition, he parrots the most facile , not to mention hateful, narratives of his own country typically advanced by those in the world least dedicated to the progressive politics he presumably supports.
Manzoor: Like Operation Enduring Freedom?
Franzen (laughs): Yeah, Operation Enduring Freedom. It does make me wonder what it is in the national character that’s making us a problem state. And, I think this mixed-up, childish notion of freedom. And, perhaps, truly, who left Europe to go over there (to come to the U.S.)? It was all the malcontents. It was all the people who were not getting along with others.
This is truly a remarkable statement. Franzen characterizes the millions of Europeans (and citizens from other continents) — who escaped the poverty, and political and religious oppression, which characterized life for such people in their native countries (especially during the major waves of U.S. immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century) to start their lives anew in a land which clearly represented for them “a land of opportunity” — as “malcontents…who were not getting along with others.”
Manzoor: Are you more comfortable in America now then when you started writing the book?
Franzen: No. The liberal left has power but the system itself is so screwed up.and we (The Democrats) are relatively the adult party…so we’re responsible for making an unworkable system work. It’s this kind of discouragement and dull, throbbing anxiety.”
Yes…much like the dull, throbbing anxiety I feel when I contemplate how many Guardian fellow travelers — not to mention Franzen’s fellow Americans — may subscribe to his views. I continue to wonder how certain Americans (and her allies abroad), who simply can not deny that the U.S. is blessed with simply unparalleled political freedom and economic affluence — which would have been simply been unimaginable throughout most of human history — have developed such a seemingly immutable masochism and self-loathing. The moral inversion on display in Franzen’s interview with the Guardian represents something close to the ground zero of such a dynamic.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
The Real Muslim Threat
Op-ed: Muslim Brotherhood much greater threat to US than ground zero mosque
The struggle against the Islamic Center and mosque near the ruins of the World Trade Center seems over. The owners of the building, whoever they are, have the legal right to build whatever they want, and will exercise that right. The opposition, however, did not lose the fight. It exposed those behind the project and their motives; as a result, many people woke up to the danger of Islamism. Efforts to insist on openness and transparency must continue — but in a different, and more important direction.
The proposed Islamic Center is only a building. A far greater threat to American security and values is the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide Islamist organization that is behind this project, and many others, that seeks to expand the influence of radical political Islam.
Founded in Egypt, in 1928, the Brotherhood is the source of modern radical Islamic movements. With branches in 70 countries and linked to major Islamic organizations, it has an extensive and well-financed network of educational, social and cultural institutions that promote a strategic plan for Islamic dominance — not through violence, but integration, becoming part of the national social and political life, and promoting Sharia law. These connections give it access to political power, and explain why it and the organizations it supports are courted by governments and NGOs.
Adapting to local conditions, the Brotherhood provides educational, social and religious services to Muslim communities, and, because of a lack of local leadership, assumes an advocacy role to non-Muslim political leaders and institutions. Except for its support of terrorism de-legitimization against Israel, and opposition to wars in Muslim countries, it is non-violent, although it distributes radical Islamist literature and is affiliated with radical clerics.
As Lorenzo Vidino observes in his book, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West, the Brotherhood is “a global ideological movement” that uses a “sophisticated international network” to spread Islam and achieve world domination. Jihad, a uniquely Islamist combination of religious and political/military agendas, seeks to eradicate the “moral bankruptcy of Western culture,” and establish Islamic rule via a Caliphate, under Sharia — strict Islamic law.
Through a network of educational, social, professional and cultural organizations — which, in the West, do not reveal their Muslim Brotherhood connection — they exert political influence and promote a mix of religious and political ideologies associated with the extremist Wahhabi form of Islam. Supported by Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, and wealthy Muslims, they espouse a global strategy for Islamic hegemony.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Tries to Detect Muslim Radicals at Home
A call by al Qaeda American spokesman Adam Gadahn for Muslim extremists living in the West to launch attacks highlights the way U.S. officials are struggling to define and meet the growing threat of homegrown terrorism and domestic radicalization.
“My brothers: Know that Jihad is your duty as well,” the 32-year old California-raised Muslim convert said in a 40-minute English-language video released over the weekend. Gadahn, who is on the FBI’s most wanted list, said he was addressing militants “on the margins of [Western] society in the miserable suburbs of Paris, London and Detroit.”
“You have an opportunity to strike the leaders of unbelief and retaliate against them on their own soil,” he told them, according to a transcript prepared by the private-sector SITE Intelligence Group. (SITE stands for Search for International Terrorist Entities.)
Officials continue to warn publicly about the danger from homegrown Muslim extremists, including those who “self-radicalize” using websites and Internet chat rooms, and who are drawn from a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds.
On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told police chiefs that the threat from such individuals “prepared to carry out terrorist acts … with little or no warning” meant that “a real turning point in how we approach our nation’s security” had been reached.
“More and more,” she told the International Association of Chiefs of Police annual conference in Orlando, Fla., “we’re seeing the increased role of Westerners, including U.S. citizens,” many of whom “are unknown to the intelligence community and unknown to federal authorities.”
A study last month by congressional researchers identified 19 arrests in U.S. homegrown Islamic extremist terrorist plots between May 2009 and August 2010 — more than three times the number in any single year since 2001.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Video: Dohrn Calls Murder Accusations ‘Stupid’
Weathermen terror group co-founder confronted on camera
Weather Underground terrorist group co-founder Bernardine Dohrn responded to allegations her husband, co-founder William Ayers, recalled her placing a pipe bomb outside a San Francisco Police Department building Feb. 16, 1970.
The shrapnel from the bomb’s explosion killed Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell. Another officer, Robert Fogarty, was wounded in the face and legs and was left partially blind.
“That is so preposterous,” stated Dohrn. “The police have been investigating that murder for 45 years. I had nothing to do with it. It’s still open, of course, it’s an unsolved murder. That’s tragic for his family,” she said.
Dohrn was responding to questions from Cliff Kincaid, president of America’s Survival Inc., who confronted her on camera last week at the Green Fest in Washington, D.C., where Dorhn and Ayers were keynote speakers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Where Pocahontas Said, ‘I Do’
Her life has been celebrated in song, story and a Disney cartoon, but no one knew where Pocahontas tied the knot with a tobacco farmer—until now.
Archaeologist Bill Kelso and his team were digging this summer in a previously unexplored section of the fort at Jamestown, Va., the country’s oldest permanent English colony, when they uncovered a series of deep holes. They believe the holes once anchored heavy, timber columns supporting the fort’s first church, known to have been built in 1608 and the place where Pocahontas got married in 1614.
The 60-foot-long walls and thatch roof are all gone now, but a row of graves was subsequently found in what would have been the church’s chancel— an area near the altar where prominent Anglicans were traditionally buried. “That’s when we started high-fiving,” said, Mr. Kelso, director of archaeology at Historic Jamestowne, a nonprofit organization that oversees excavations there. “I’m convinced we’ve found the church.”
The church’s exact location had bedeviled Jamestown scholars for years. Records say it was built roughly a year after Britain’s King James sent a crew of around 100 men, including Captain John Smith, to establish an outpost 40 miles upriver from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
The men were supposed to be primarily seeking a profit, not Christian converts. The only previous evidence of a church consisted of remnants of a later church, built in 1617 near the eastern wall of the fort. But this summer’s find proves Capt. Smith’s men planted their first church in the center of the compound, the first and largest structure anyone would notice after passing through the fort’s entrance.
“People have never associated Jamestown with religion, but it was positioned to make a statement,” said James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg, which helps manage the fort site.
Pocahontas, a powerful chief’s daughter, became acquainted with Captain Smith and the other colonists in 1607 and, Smith claimed, saved his life after he’d been taken prisoner by her father’s men. Smith returned to England in 1609 and Pocahontas married settler John Rolfe; three years later, she died in England.
Next spring, forensic anthropologists will exhume the row of chancel graves, which might contain the remains of the fort’s first minister or Sir Ferdinando Wenman, a knight who arrived in 1610 to rally the fort’s starving few and aid the colony’s historic turnaround.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Giant Virus With Tiny Victims Carries a Monster Genome
A giant virus that infests microscopic sea creatures has the largest genome of any marine virus, and the second largest of any virus. Its genome includes a host of genes not normally found in viruses, lending support to claims that viruses had a critical role in the evolution of complex life.
The virus was found infesting a single-celled organism called Cafeteria roenbergensis, which lives in oceans around the world and eats other single cells, mostly bacteria. The virus is named after its host, going by the name of Cafeteria roenbergensis virus strain BV-PW1, or CroV.
As viruses go CroV is a whopper, with a protein shell 300 nanometres across — though the record held by the mimivirus, 500nm across, is in no danger. CroV was first discovered in 1995 by Curtis Suttle of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and his colleague Randy Garza. Now a team headed by Suttle has analysed its DNA.
CroV’s genome is 730,000 bases long; among viruses, only the mimivirus has a larger genome. CroV’s contains 544 genes, including some that code for a series of proteins used in metabolism. Viruses rarely carry the genes for such things, because they normally hijack the molecular machinery of cellular organisms.
CroV’s advanced genetic baggage marks it as similar to the mimivirus, which also carries a lot of genes that viruses do not normally have.
“They really blur the lines between cellular and viral life,” says Suttle.
No thief
It has often been assumed that such giant viruses “steal” their genes from their hosts. However, many of CroV’s genes are completely different to anything found in cellular organisms, suggesting that they are unique to viruses.
CroV’s genome is remarkably similar to that of the mimivirus, with 12 per cent of the genes apparently matching up. This implies that all giant viruses have a single common ancestor, says Suttle. Jean-Michel Claverie of the Genomic and Structural Information Laboratory in Marseille, France, who was not involved in the study, agrees.
Claverie is one of a growing band of researchers who think that viruses may have shaped the course of evolution. Around 2 billion years ago, he suggests, a giant virus became trapped in a bacterium. The two formed a cooperative relationship, and, so the controversial theory goes, the virus eventually developed into the nucleus found in modern eukaryotic cells.
“Suttle’s work is very important for the debate on the evolution of viruses,” he says.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
City Drowning in Rubbish: 10,000 Tons of Waste Pile Up on Streets of Marseilles in Chilling Echo of British ‘Winter of Discontent’
Nearly 10,000 tons of rubbish has piled up in the streets of Marseilles as French strikes and blockades continued.
All of the country’s 12 oil refineries remained closed today after nearly two weeks of industrial action which is costing the country up to £350 million a day.
During the disruption French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s opinion poll ratings have collapsed and he is now the least popular leader in the history of the Fifth Republic.
Demonstrators restored their blockade at France’s biggest refinery of Fos-sur-Mer, Marseilles, following last week’s clearing of their demonstration by CRS riot police.
‘The refinery is back in our hands — the police are standing off,’ said a local trade union spokesman.
Around 70 ships including oil tankers are currently waiting at anchor off the coast of Marseille because militants will not let them dock and unload.
Up to a quarter of 12,500 fuel stations have run dry, with rationing introduced in area which are particularly popular with visitors from the UK, including Brittany and Normandy.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Columbus Cleared of Importing Syphilis From America After Skeletons From Two Centuries Earlier Show Signs of Disease
Christopher Columbus and his crew have long been blamed for syphilis back from the Americas to Europe after their historic first voyage.
In 1493 they returned to Spain bringing news of lands across the Atlantic and the first cases of the potentially deadly disease thanks to their exploits abroad, it was believed.
But now scientists have found evidence that the disease existed in Europe long before Columbus was even born.
Skeletons unearthed in a cemetery at a church in East London show signs of the disease up to two centuries before the explorer first set sail.
Archaelogists excavating bones from St Mary Spital in East London found rough patches on skulls and limbs of some of the skeletons, telling evidence of syphilis.
Brian Connell, an expert from the Museum of London who studied the bones, said he had no doubt that the skeletons were buried before Columbus’ voyage. Radiocarbon dating of the samples is estimated to be 95 percent accurate.
Previous findings of early syphilitic bones have been inconclusive.
Mr Connell said: ‘We’re confident that Christopher Columbus is simply not a feature of the emergence and timing of the disease in Europe,’ he told The Times.
‘This puts the nail in the coffin of the Columbus theory.’
Two of the syphilitic skeletons unearthed at St Mary Spital are from 1200 — 1250 while the other five are from 1250 — 1400. They were buried with coins and other objects that helped the experts corroborate the radiocarbon dating results.
The site was named after the hospital nearby in the City of London and the skeleton were probably victims of the disease who were patients there.
One of the skeletons belong to a child who would have been blind, bald and had teeth that grew at a 45 degree angle through its jaw because of the disease.
Mr Connell said: ‘IT would have had gross facial disfigurement, which would have been very distressing for the child, who was about 10 years old when it died.
‘The skull, which should have been smooth, looks like a lunar landscape. It caused a bit of a stir when it was found because the symptoms are so obvious.’
Syphilis causes serious damage to the heart, brain, eyes and bones and if untreated can be fatal. It is carried by the bacterium Treponema palladium.
In an era hundreds of years before the discovery of antibiotics, syphilis quickly spread and was soon the scourge of every major city.
Ever since the first recorded case in Europe took place in 1495 — three years after Columbus’s first voyage to the New World — doctors have argued over its origins.
Some have claimed that it existed in Europe in ancient times. But others have claimed it was the price of those early and often violent visits to Latin America.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Commission Breaks Taboo on ‘Own Resources’
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — The European Commission has proposed a list of potential methods to enable the EU to raise its ‘own resources’ in future, citing the need to end current wrangling over member state contributions to the Brussels budget.
A separate EU-wide value added tax (VAT) is among the ideas contained in the commission’s “budget review” published on Tuesday (19 October), a document which stems from a Franco-British spat in December 2005 over EU payments.
Other self-funding mechanisms could include a financial sector tax, a share of profits from auctioned greenhouse gas emission allowances, an EU charge related to air transport, an EU energy tax or an EU corporate income tax.
Presenting the review in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, EU budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski said the EU budget should rely less on member state contributions, as was previously the case.
National contributions, based on gross national income (GNI), represented 10 percent of the EU budget in 1988, but these days amounts to roughly 70 percent as takings from EU customs duties and farm levies have declined.
“The question of EU funding priorities is always overshadowed by debate on ‘net contributors’ or ‘juste retour’,” Mr Lewandowski told the MEPs. “That is why we need to find a way out of this.”
In a bid to head off member state opposition to the funding proposals, the commission was quick to stress that the new mechanisms would not result in extra revenue for the EU institutions, but would instead relieve pressure on national coffers at a time of economic difficulty.
The formerly taboo subject of a European tax is likely to provoke strong reactions in the coming days, with the UK among wary member states who fear self-funding powers could lead to an overly-independent set of EU institutions.
The list of ideas in Tuesday’s document will also kickstart the debate on the shape of the EU’s next multi-annual budget, with the current spending period due to end in 2013. This year’s annual expenditure will total roughly €130 billion, of which 70 percent goes towards the common agricultural policy (CAP) and poorer regions.
The upcoming talks are expected to be heated, with net contributors such as Germany, the UK and the Netherlands likely to look for EU austerity measures to match spending cuts back home. Poland and other eastern states are set to defend the EU system of payments of which they are net recipients.
France has indicated it will not support a scaling back of the CAP, while London has clearly said that its EU budget rebate is not up for discussion.
While shying away from specific recommendations on which sectors should have their funding cut, the commission’s budget review does call for a shifting of money to areas that promote “smart, sustainable and inclusive growth … such as energy and climate change.”
“The common agricultural policy needs to evolve, if only because reference values for direct payments are now a decade old,” said a commission statement.
“The EU budget must focus on added-value; in short, it must identify where one euro spent at the European level brings more benefit than at the national level,” continued the statement.
Concrete commission proposals on the post-2013 multi-annual budget are expected to be published in July of next year, with unanimous member state approval and European parliamentary support needed before they can become law.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: Former Communist Support Haunts SF Official
Former head of Danish communist party reportedly took in millions from USSR
A high-ranking member of the opposition Socialist People’s Party (SF) has come under fire for his support of East German communists while head of the Communist Party of Denmark (DKP).
According to B.T. newspaper, party spokesman Ole Sohn sent East German leader Erich Honecker a letter six days after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that reportedly praised the communist government of East Germany and suggested it should hold onto power and resist efforts for reunification with West Germany.
In referring to mass anti-communist demonstrations in Poland and Hungary at the time, Sohn’s letter stated that ‘a strong socialist East Germany would have an even greater importance for the communist party’s work’.
Since the letter was dug up from the East German archives in Berlin, it has also been reported that Sohn has also been accused of receiving 5.2 million kroner in support for DKP from the Soviet Union.
B.T. also asserted that Sohn joined Honecker and Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu on the speakers’ podium at the 40-year anniversary celebration for East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party in Berlin on 7 October 1989.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Border Guards to Secure Greek Frontier
The EU and UN have voiced concern over the flood of illegal immigrants entering Europe over the porous border between Turkey and Greece. Responding to Greek pleas for help, the EU is now deploying Rapid Border Intervention Teams for the first time. German commentators agree that this is a European problem and Greece cannot be left alone to fight it.
The European Commission is sending Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABIT) to Greece’s eastern border in an attempt to curb the flow of illegal immigrants from Turkey. On Sunday, overwhelmed Greek officials requested European Union assistance after a recent spike in the number of illegal crossings.
Greek officials in the flashpoint border town of Orestiada have said they are dealing with as many as 350 migrants every day. According to the Greek government, there were 45,000 illegal border crossings in the first six months of 2010 alone. The European Union estimates that 90 percent of all people caught attempting to enter the political bloc illegally are apprehended along the Greek border.
Overstretched border guards, police stations and migrant detention centers are now in “a critical state” in Greece, the United Nations has warned. Overcrowding has meant that migrants are suffering “inhuman and degrading treatment,” a UN official added.
The EU’s Warsaw-based Frontex border agency is tasked with coordinating the border security of all member states. Frontex officials claim that a large number of the immigrants from Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Iran and enter into Greece with the intention of traveling to other EU member states.
The RABIT teams will be coordinated by Frontex but will act “under the authority of Greece,” European Commission officials stated. Their members will be acting as officers of the Greek national border guard, but they will bear the EU insignia and they will be armed and authorized to use force if necessary. RABIT teams will also be granted access to Greek intelligence databases.
‘A Truly European Problem’
Under European law asylum seekers can only apply for asylum status in the country that was their port of entry into the EU in order to prevent migrants from submitting applications in more than one land. The EU’s 2003 Dublin Regulation (third country regulation) gives member states the right to deport asylum seekers back to their entry country. Under the regulation, however, southern Europe receives the brunt of illegal immigrants to the EU.
A recent UN fact-finding mission found Greece, in particular, to be bearing an unacceptable burden. UN special rapporteur Manfred Nowak said “Greece should not carry the burden of the vast majority of all irregular migrants entering the European Union” and called for a joint European solution to what he called a “truly European problem.”
On Tuesday, German editorialists take up the issue, offering critical persectives of the current EU regulations…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Minutes Ignore ‘Racist’ Charge Against PVV Parliamentarian
A conflict between a European MP for the anti-Islam PVV and Turkey’s minister for European affairs has been excluded from minutes of the meeting, which took place in May, the Volkskrant reports on Tuesday.
During the row, which took place during a meeting between the European and Turkish parliaments in Istanbul, Egemen Bagis called MEP Barry Madlener a racist, the paper says.
But no mention of the incident is contained in minutes of the meeting, much to Madlener’s fury. ‘This is crazy,’ he told the paper. ‘Minutes should give an accurate picture of what was said.’
Thomas Grünert, secretary to the European parliament, told the paper the comments had not been recorded because they were ‘not really a political point’ and that it ‘was something personal between Madlener and Bagis’.
The PVV is opposed to Turkish membership of the EU.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Far-Right ‘Lite’ To Push for EU Referendum on Turkish Accession
Europe’s far-right ‘lite’ parties are to push for a pan-European referendum on Turkish accession to the bloc under the EU’s new rules.
Six extreme right parties meeting in Vienna on Saturday (23 october) — Austria’s Freedom Party (FPO), Belgium’s Flemish separatists of the Vlaams Belang, the Danish People’s Party, Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League, the Slovak National Party and the Sweden Democrats — are about to launch their own citizens’ campaign hot on the heels of the success of the left-wing online pressure group Avaaz, which earlier this month collected a million names demanding a ban on genetically modified organisms across the EU.
Under Lisbon Treaty rules, which entered into life in January this year, the European Citizens’ Initiative forces the European Commission to consider proposing legislation if a million EU voters sign a petition.
The Vienna conference, entitled “EU after the Lisbon Treaty” also discussed Islam in Europe and immigration, two hobby-horses of the parties.
The meeting follows a similar gathering in Vienna last year in advance of a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland, where most of the same clutch of parties strategised how to campaign against passage of the treaty.
While the traditional far right is explicitly anti-EU, and the so-called far-right ‘lite’ parties are certainly eurosceptic, the parties in Vienna on Saturday said they opposed Turkish accession in order to defend the Union.
“That would be the end of the European Union,” said FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache, “and the beginning of a Eurasian-African Union that would completely go against our European peace project and must therefore not be allowed.”
The meeting represents a further shift in the realignment on the far right.
Many of the attendees have strived to strip themselves of any association with the fascist nostalgia of the hardcore far right, focussing on Islam and immigration and embracing Israel, and met with considerable success in recent years.
Most recently, the nationalist Sweden Democrats, which in 2001 cleansed itself of its hardcore element (which would later establish themselves as the National Democrats) in September’s 2010 general election crossed for the first time the four percent threshold necessary for a parliamentary representation, polling 5.7 percent and winning 20 seats.
The British National Party, Hungary’s paramilitary-linked Jobbik and Bulgaria’s Ataka were all explicitly not invited to Vienna by the Freedom Party organisers, who described such parties as being on the extreme right.
At last year’s Vienna conference, organised by the FPO’s education division, Ataka and France’s Front National had been invited.
Saturday’s Vienna congress meeting will also form part of the FPO’s attempts to court the European Freedom and Democracy (EFD) grouping in the European Parliament led by Britain’s non-far-right UK Independence Party.
The FPO was frozen out of the eurosceptic grouping in the chamber by Ukip in the horse-trading among different parties in the wake of last year’s European Parliament elections. But the EFD nevertheless has a number of member parties whose ideology is considered hard right by most monitors of the scene. While comfortable with these other parties, Ukip for its part wants nothing to do with the FPO.
However, the Northern League, the Danish People’s Party and Slovakia’s SNS, who sit with Ukip in the EFD, were all at the FPO event and are on friendlier terms with the Austrian party.
According to sources close to the parliamentary grouping, Ukip “has tried to keep its distance as the FPO are simply too extreme.”
“There is something of a realignment going on, although it’s not a fixed situation. It’s in flux. If these people can manage to make the changes to their parties or convince people that they have nothing to do with the genuine far right, that people understand they are not extreme, they have a real chance.”
“But it’s also about the money. A larger grouping in the European Parliament brings in more money, and it’s a lonely place to be sitting on your own without a group,” said the source.
The FPO currently sits in Brussels unattached to any parliamentary grouping.
“There has been an overture from the FPO to join for quite some months now. But I don’t think it’s going to happen,” the contact said.
According to the European Parliament, adding another couple of members in general would not result in a great deal more money, but adding members that use another language would produce a “step-change” in their funding. The group has no german-speaking MEPs.
It has yet to be decided whether the EFD will participate as a group in the anti-Turkey petition drive, but the grouping is unanimous in opposing the country’s accession the bloc, EFD spokesman Hermann Kelly told EUobserver.
“All members of the EFD are extremely critical of Turkish accession. Turkey is too big, too poor and too different,” he said.
“The Turkish state is guilty of the abuse of basic human rights, and has invaded and continues to occupy the Republic of Cyprus,” he added. He rejected however that such a perspective was unique to the far right.
“The EFD is a group of democractic parties and in no way accepts the sobriquet ‘right-wing’.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Fury Goes Beyond Pensions
A Commentary by Ullrich Fichtner
The French are not just protesting to stop the retirement age from being raised. They are also fighting to save their country from government sleaze and the dismantling of democracy.
During his adventurous journeys across oceans and through faraway lands, Obelix, the loyal friend of Asterix in the famous French comic book series of that name, is often surprised by local customs and traditions. Whenever he encounters something unfamiliar, the fat Gaul in the blue-and-white striped pants taps his red hair and mumbles: “These Romans are crazy,” or makes similar remarks about whichever nationality he happens to have encountered.
These days, as the French take to the barricades once again to protest a pension reform that appears to be necessary, one might be tempted to turn Obelix’s remarks around, and ask: Are these Gauls crazy? Have the French lost their minds?
Last week, garbage collectors went on strike in Marseille, while shouting high-school students marched through the streets of Nanterre. Buses and trains remained idle in Calais, Dijon, Toulouse and Nice, where public transportation was almost shut down for entire days at a time. In 24 university cities, including Rennes, Caen, Montpellier and Grenoble, students marched out of lecture halls and became a jubilant threat to public safety on downtown streets. There was no mail delivery in Poitiers and there were no newspapers in Paris.
Because protesters had blocked access to refineries and fuel depots, more than 3,000 filling stations around the country ran out of gas. Traffic at the airports in Paris and other cities was seriously disrupted, many long-distance trains were cancelled throughout the country and truck drivers provoked traffic jams on major highways. The corresponding images, including those of small fires set by rioters, quickly circled the globe.
Those who have paid only fleeting attention to the events in France and have relied on little more than brief, hectic news reports must conclude that the French, in defiance of all reason, are fighting ferociously to keep their retirement age at 60, and not change it to 62, as the government wants to do. If this were true, one would indeed be forced to conclude that the French are mad, and France itself would have to be written off as a serious partner in Europe until further notice. But fortunately the truth looks a little different.
Yes, the French are protesting against a flawed, unfair and poorly executed pension reform, and they are angry about more than what is being touted as a number of ridiculously minor changes. At the same time, however, the resistance against this concrete reform project by a very broad, only loosely cohesive protest movement offers a welcome excuse for the French to finally vent their long-simmering frustrations with their general situation. In fact, France is currently witnessing a veritable popular uprising against a government which has been shaken by scandals and which is already over the hill after only half of its term in office. The real target of the protesters’ anger is Nicolas Sarkozy, the most unpopular French president of the last 30 years.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Greece Most Corrupt Country in the EU, Watchdog Says
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — Greece is perceived as EU’s most corrupt state, falling behind usual suspects Bulgaria and Romania and scoring the same as China, an annual corruption index published by Transparency International shows.
Almost a year after Prime Minister George Papandreou had declared war on corruption and maladministration, the country’s has slipped even further down the ranking in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italian Seaside Town Bans ‘Scanty Clothing’
Skimpily-clothed women in the town of Castellammare di Stabia in southern Italy are to be fined by the police under new regulations banning “very scanty clothing” that were approved late Monday.
The ban will include skirts judged to be too short, jeans that are too low-slung and necklines that are too plunging and is intended to guard against anti-social behaviour, a spokesman for the town council told AFP.
Mayor Luigi Bobbio of Italy’s ruling People of Freedom party defended the much-derided new legislation, which prompted a small protest by female members of the opposition Democratic Party who held a “Mini-skirt Day” rally.
“Mini-skirts are not included in the ban. Mini-skirts are not considered very scanty clothing unless they’re so small that they are no longer a skirt and they leave the undergarment showing,” Bobbio said before the vote.
Following the vote, he said the ban made Castellammare “a civilized city.”
But a protester outside the town council on Monday held up a placard reading: “The only ones in just their underwear are Castellammare’s workers” — an apparent reference to threatened job cuts at the town’s shipyard.
The new rules also ban blaspheming, sunbathing in public and playing football in many public areas — a hugely popular pastime in the town.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government has given Italy’s mayors greater powers to enforce measures seen as improving public order.
| — Hat tip: KGS | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Naples Rubbish Crisis ‘Over in 10 Days’ Says Berlusconi
Rome, 22 Oct. (AKI) — Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday moved to tackle an escalating garbage crisis in the Naples area, vowing to bring the situation under control “in 10 days”.
“We believe the situation can be brought back to normal in 10 days,” Berlusconi told journalists in Rome.
His pledge followed emergency talks in Rome between the premier, interior and environment ministers and the head of Italy’s civil protection agency, who is also a cabinet minister.
Guido Bertolaso, a junior minister who heads the Italian civil protection agency, was due to travel to Naples on Friday. He has been tasked with quelling protests in the nearby town of Terzigno, where protests against a new dump by residents have taken an increasingly violent turn in recent weeks.
Several people have been arrested over clashes in Terzigno between police and thousands of stone- and molotov cocktail throwing protesters.A number of garbage trucks and a police car were set alight during the protests, prompting police baton charges.
“The government has earmarked 14 million euros for Terzigno,” Berlusconi announced, referring to funds to be paid in compensation to residents for living with the dumps.
The civil protection agency will take over management of the new Terzigno dump from the company that currently runs it, he said.
He and Bertolaso denied claims that new incinerators were not working properly and said they would be an important part of the solution to the crisis.
Berlusconi also denied suggestions that his resolution of a similar crisis when he took office in May 2008 had not been “permanent and lasting”.
He blamed local authorities for failing to follow through on government plans.
Earlier, European Union officials in Brussels warned they were considering imposing hefty fines on Italy for its failure to handle the situation in the Campania region around Naples.
EU Commission spokesperson Janez Potocnik said the executive was “worried” by the situation in Naples, and the opening of a new dump in Terzigno in the Mount Vesuvius national park.
But Berlusconi claimed that greenery would grow above the dump once it was full, and said an existing dump just outside the national park would be cleaned up.
He denied dumps necessarily impacted negatively on the living conditions of nearby communities, claiming they could be modified to prevent this.
Bertolaso said he intended to consult local communities in the Terzigno area and let them air their grievances.
“We’ll discuss all the problems in order to reassure people that there are no risks to their health,” he stated.
“We want to return to running the dump as it was supposed to be run, without any bad smells or sea gulls hovering around. This will be done out of respect for the citizens of Terzigno and neighbouring areas,” Bertolaso said.
Critics of the government’s handling of the problem say waste disposal in the Naples area remains plagued by a lack of efficient and environmentally sound sorting practices.
Measures introduced by the government such as opening new dumps failed to tackle the root causes of the problem, including the role played by the Naples mafia or Camorra in the lucrative waste disposal business, according to critics.
Berlusconi said on Friday interior minister Roberto Maroni told him there was no evidence the Camorra was stoking the crisis in Naples.
The current situation echoes the 2007-2008 crisis when refuse in the southern port city went uncollected for months — seriously embarrassing the centre-left government of then premier Romano Prodi.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Kazakh ‘Father-Creator’ Comes Technology Shopping to EU
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS — Kazakhstan’s septuagenerian President Nursultan Nazarbayev has brought over 50 businessmen on a three day visit to the EU that is to see the European Investment Bank (EIB) open a €1.5 billion credit line to help fund technological upgrades.
Kairat Kelimbetov, the chief executive of Samruk-Kazyna, the state-owned firm which owns much of the country’s oil, gas, uranium and transport sectors, told EUobserver in a phone interview on Monday (25 October) that the EIB will sign a memorandum of understanding on the funds during the EU peregrination.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
New Political Party Aims to Scupper Sweden’s Far-Right
Following the success in September elections of a far-right populist party in the country, a Swedish immigrant has formed a party working to protect immigrants’ interests. The new party is being founded amidst a wave of violent crime against foreigners in the southern city of Malmö last week.
Sweden’s political landscape has not been the same since the far-right populist Sweden Democrats took their first seats ever in the national parliament at the beginning of October.
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s center-right coalition lacks an overall majority in parliament, the Swedish Social Democrats are looking for a new strategy to gain power and the right people for the job. And now the political landscape has been jolted by the arrival of a new player known as the Svarskalledemokraterna in Swedish, or “Wog Democrats.”
The new party, which says it has gathered a thousand members over just a few days, sees itself as a group of immigrants working to protect foreigners’ interests. They also seek to protest the sudden rise of the populist Sweden Democrats.
Last month, the far-right party won 20 seats in the 349-member parliament. As part of its racist platform, the Sweden Democrats has dubbed Islam the greatest foreign threat since World War II and wants to severely cut back on immigration.
Sinister Shootings
The right-wing swing within parliament sent a “clear warning signal,” said party founder Tarek Alkhatib, a doctor who heads a clinic in Stockholm. “We have to defend ourselves through greater political activity,” he said.
Many immigrants did not feel adequately protected by the established parties, he added.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Supreme Court President: “Wilders Damages Authority of Law”
AMSTERDAM, 26/10/10 — The President of the Supreme Court, Geert Corstens, considers that Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders is undermining jurisprudence in the Netherlands.
Critical statements on jurisprudence such as Wilders has made during the proceedings against him have an “undermining” effect on jurisprudence, particularly as the leader of the PVV is also still a parliamentarian, according to Corstens. MPs should contribute to the stability of the constitutional state, said the president on television programme Buitenhof.
On Friday, a special chamber of the Amsterdam district court ruled that the ongoing case against Wilders must be restarted with other judges. The three sitting judges have shown the appearance of bias.
The lawyers had refused a request by Wilders’ defence to investigate whether an expert witness was put under pressure during a dinner by Tom Schalken. He is one of the judges who gave the order to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OM) to prosecute Wilders.
The MP is on trial for incitement to hatred, discrimination and insulting of Muslims as a group. Schalken is said to have tried to convince Islam expert Hans Jansen during an informal dinner of Wilders’ guilt.
Corstens now criticises Wilders’ comment that he had landed up “in a legal circus.” The PVV leader said this Friday when commenting on his request for different judges. In the Supreme Court president’s view, such statements “wrongly” nourish feelings among the public that the judiciary is no good.
Wilders thinks Corstens should look in the mirror. He comments that the replacement of the judges shows that he was correct that they were not beyond doubt impartial. “Corstens would be better to worry about judges like Schalken.”
Wilders has meanwhile officially launched proceedings against Schalken for influencing a witness. If the OM does not prosecute the judge, the MP will fight this decision in a district court to try to force the OM to do so after all. It was precisely in this way that Wilders himself landed up on the defendant’s bench.
Schalken has since run into deeper controversy due to a leaked letter that he wrote last week to the President of the Amsterdam Bar Association. In it, he complains that the lawyers who are supposed to demonstrate Wilders’ guilt are amateurs. The letter carries a ‘strictly confidential’ stamp.
Schalken says to the bar association chief that the reputation of the Netherlands is being damaged by the lawyers Ties Prakken (“the Mother Teresa of the squatting movement”), Mohammed Enait and Nico Steijnen (“the Laurel en Hardy of our legal profession”) and Michiel Pestman (“a conceited, arrogant individual”).
One of the many grievous mistakes of the prosecuting lawyers is the conclusion of Enait that Wilders is “a little Hitler.” Such a statement, which the lawyer made in court, goes much further than any statement whatever for which Wilders is on trial, which is disastrous for the credibility of the case, suggests Schalken. He asks the bar association “to take the appropriate measures as you see fit.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: New Shootings Reported in Malmö
Malmö police received a further report on what could be another of the wave of shootings suspected to be directed against people of immigrant descent in the city, while residents came out in force to demonstrate against the violence.
Police received a report from a man on Östra Farmvägen in the Kartrinelund area of the city who thought that he had been the target of a shooting.
“He said that he had heard some form of bang or a crack and we went over to speak to the man and search for any clues,” said Charley Nilsson at Skåne police.
Just prior to that several people got in touch regrading a shooting by a local store on Ramels väg.
“We we got there we found four empty cases and deemed that they came from a start pistol and not a live weapon,” said Nilsson.
He continued to point out that it remains serious if someone has let off a shot with a start pistol, not only because someone could get hurt, but also considering that it could contribute to the level of fear and concern regarding the wave of unsolved shootings.
“Furthermore it uses up time which we could otherwise use for something else and perhaps more important work,” Nilsson said.
On Monday evening police seized a car after the driver heard a bang and then the rear windscreen exploded.
“We was about to drive out of a garage on Ramels väg when he heard the noise,” Nilsson said.
Police do not believe that anyone has shot directly at the car or the driver, however.
“But we want to be certain and rule it out.”
Elsewhere on Monday evening, several hundred people gathered in a new demonstration against violence and social marginalization, in response to the shootings in the city.
“Together we are bulletproof,” read one of the banners.
At a press conference earlier in the day it was concluded that 19 of the 50 or so shootings which have occurred since October last year have been consigned the file marked unexplained which are now the focus of investigations.
“The profiling group have now gone through all the cases and come to the conclusion that there are good grounds to believe that it concerns the same perpetrator, but we can not get stuck on the idea,” said detective inspector Börje Sjöholm at Skåne county police.
Police have confirmed that one person has died and eight people have been injured as a result of the attacks which have been compared to the “Laserman” spate of shootings which occurred in the early 1990s.
Laserman was the nickname given to John Ausonius, who shot 11 people of immigrant origin, killing one, in and around Stockholm from August 1991 to January 1992.
Ausonius, who in many of the attacks used a rifle equipped with a laser sight, was sentenced to life behind bars in 1994 and remains in prison.
Just as with the Laserman case, the recent shootings in Malmö come at a time when an openly anti-immigration party has just entered the Swedish parliament.
This year, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats won 20 seats in parliament in the September 19th election with an especially strong showing in the south of Sweden.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘So How Many Wives Does Your Husband Have M’Dear?’ Flirty Prince Philip Charmed by the Emir’s ‘Sheikha’
It was all smiles as the Queen officially welcomed the Emir of Qatar to Britain today with a ceremony full of pomp and pageantry amid the regal splendour of Windsor Castle.
And Prince Philip proved that even though he’s 89 he can still spot a beautiful lady, as he shared a private joke with the Emir’s third wife, stunning 50-year-old Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned.
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and his wife are the monarch’s guests at Windsor Castle during a three-day state visit.
The Emir and his wife are staying at the queen’s residence after a procession by horse-drawn carriage through the streets of Windsor.
After the official greeting in the grounds of Windsor Castle where the Emir, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, reviewed a Guard of Honour, the royal group had lunch.
The Emir will visit Downing Street for talks with David Cameron and Westminster where the Gulf ruler will address the All Party Parliamentary British-Qatar Group, peers and MPs.
In the evening the Queen was hosting a state banquet for the foreign royals at Windsor Castle where both the monarch and her counterpart were making speeches.
The oil and gas-rich Gulf emirate has a growing influence in Britain and has seen some high profile developments in recent years including the acquisition of the world famous Harrods store for a reported £1.5billion in May.
The Forbes list of richest monarchs puts Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani in eighth place with a fortune of $2.4billion, ahead of our own Elizabeth II who is ranked twelfth richest.
Not including the value of Buckingham Palace or the British crown jewels, which belong to the nation, the Queen owns valuable property in England and Scotland, fine art, gems and a stamp collection, all of which is estimated to be worth a combined $450million.
Qatar invested more than £2billion in Britain last year, and ministers hope the country’s vast wealth could help an export-led recovery.
The coalition Government is attempting to ‘re-energise’ Britain’s standing with the Gulf states focusing on culture, business and defence relations. Last week British ministers met their Middle East counterparts at the Foreign Office to discuss the issue.
Qatar, a British protectorate until 1971, is the gateway to Afghanistan for the UK’s military, while a large amount of the country’s profits from its gas reserves are invested through London’s Square Mile.
Qatar also has a 6.8 percent stake in British banking giant Barclays and a 25.9 per cent share in the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain.
Meanwhile the Emir himself is said to own sumptuous super-yachts, and property owned in London includes his £37.4million mansion in London’s Park Lane.
On Wednesday, the Emir will visit the 2012 London Olympics stadium and, with Qatar bidding to host the 2022 football World Cup, he will hold discussions with officials on England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Heavily Armed Police Train for Possible Mumbai-Style Terror Attack on the Streets of Britain
Security chiefs are staging a series of counter-terrorism exercises with police sharpshooters training alongside units of the elite SAS under the plans.
The development follows the interception last month by British intelligence officials of a credible Al Qaeda-linked plot.
It would have reportedly been similar to the deadly commando-style raids in Mumbai, India, two years ago, which left 166 people dead and several hundred injured.
Cities in France and Germany were also targeted as part of the plot.
Former security minister Lord West told the BBC that police officers needed to be properly trained to deal with similar terror attacks.
He said: ‘These people like the Mumbai terrorists, are a bit like soldiers.
‘They do fire and support, move forward — all they want to do is kill as many people as possible, with slightly heavier weapons than our police have.
‘And therefore you have to give heavy weapons to the police and train them how to do it.
‘There is no way, except at immense cost, you could have SAS-level trained troops in every part of the country to be able to respond in the time-scale you’d need.
‘The police are there and have to do that first response.’
A Whitehall official told the BBC that the Metropolitan Police had not been asked to to do this before.
He added that the role of the police would be to contain such a situation — and the role of the SAS, if they were called upon, would be to resolve it.
The UK’s terror threat rating remains at ‘severe’, the second highest rating, where it has been since increasing from ‘substantial’ in January.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s long-awaited National Security Strategy last week accepted that the danger of Al Qaeda carrying out a murderous attack on Britain using chemical, germ or nuclear weapons has ‘not diminished’.
This has paved the way for ministers to axe outdated Cold War equipment including warships, fighter jets and tanks as part of cuts to the Ministry of Defence’s £37billion budget.
The U.S. State Department advised American citizens living or travelling in Europe earlier this month to take extra precautions following reports that terrorists may be plotting attacks in airports, travel hubs and tourist attractions.
| — Hat tip: Gaia | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Lutfur Rahman and Ife: Ofcom Rejects All Complaints About Our Channel 4 Documentary
Very attentive readers might remember the campaign the fundamentalist Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) and its allies waged tobombard the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, with complaints against my Channel 4 Dispatches programme on them. On February 22, nearly a week before the film was even broadcast, the IFE’s president, Musleh Faradhi, circulated an email saying: “We need to ensure Channel 4 receives a strong message from the community by being inundated with complaints.”
Sizzling, oven-ready template letters were helpfully provided (“I write to express my disgust and disappointment at Channel 4’s wholly inaccurate and defamatory accusations … The documentary is Islamophobic in nature … uses emotive and provocative language … is part of a series of organised, vindictive and orchestrated witch-hunts”) about a programme that no-one had, at that point, even seen.
Sadly, the community didn’t rise up against the evil Channel 4 Islamophobes in quite the numbers the IFE hoped — Ofcom got 205 complaints. Even worse (it must have actually watched the programme!) the regulator yesterday comprehensively rejected every one of those complaints (see page 29 of this PDF.) It describes our film as a “serious documentary focusing on an important issue of public interest,” calling our allegations “legitimate” and “presented with due impartiality.”
One of the most helpful things Ofcom has done is to reject a number of complaints that the programme was “inaccurate,” specifically in describing the IFE as “fundamentalist” and “extremist.” It states that our allegations were “supported by recorded clips, or actual quotes” and that all who featured were given fair opportunity to respond. There was therefore, said Ofcom, “no evidence that viewers were materially misled.”
It has also kiboshed one of the IFE’s favourite arguments — endlessly made over the last eight months — that any attack on them is an “Islamophobic” attack on all Muslims. As Ofcom put it, the programme “made clear that the allegations made related to the IFE only and were not representative of all Muslims… Nor did the programme suggest at any point that all or many Muslims or Muslim organisations or their members were in general extremist or fundamentalist.”
Another common tactic in the face of our allegations, from the fundamentalists and their sympathisers, is not actually to deny our claims, but to say that they are “unsubstantiated” or have “never been put” to them. Lutfur Rahman, the IFE’s little helper at Tower Hamlets council, is particularly fond of this.
It is nonsense, of course: we would not have been able to broadcast or publish unsubstantiated allegations. And all the allegations were exhaustively put to all concerned, as Ofcom also acknowledges.
Ofcom’s latest ruling comes two weeks after it rejected another complaint by the IFE activist, Abjol Miah, ruling that we had indeed presented good evidence that he was active in the IFE. Abjol is also one of a number of people who has lost (or withdrawn) complaints against me at the Press Complaints Commisson over this story.
Everyone who covers Islamist extremists knows how disputatious and litigious they are; the East London Mosque and IFE have the libel lawyers Carter-Ruck on a hair trigger. So this programme was extremely carefully researched. That is why it has successfully withstood all challenge.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Muslim Preaches at Oxford College Chapel
TWO religious leaders are claiming an historic first after an Islamic Imam preached at a Christian chapel.
For the first time in Pembroke College’s 500-year history, a Muslim, Dr Taj Hargey — from the Summertown Islamic Congregation in Oxford — was welcomed to deliver a sermon at its chapel.
The service was preceded by the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer traditionally carried out by a man, which was read out by an 11-year-old girl from Marston.
The Rev Dr Andrew Teal, of Pembroke College, said he had been trying to get a Muslim Imam to deliver a service at the chapel for many years and he believed it was a first.
He said: “We wanted to do something which brought together Christianity and Islam, but not to create a third thing.
“I think what we are doing today is very unusual, certainly it’s the first time I have heard of it being done at the college.
“The two faiths are actually very close.
“Abraham is a key figure in both Islam and Christianity.
“But I think there’s been a reluctance in the past. I think people may have felt afraid to do something like this.
“I’d hoped for this to happen for a long time. We just needed the right man to do it.”
Christianity and Islam, as well as Judaism, are sometimes referred to as the Abrahamic religions because of the role that Abraham plays in each of the holy books.
All three faiths consider him father of the people of Israel.
During the service, in which Dr Hargey spoke of the links between Christianity and Islam, songs and Psalms from the Bible were read before a reading from the Holy Qur’an.
Dr Hargey, who is also chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, invited 11-year-old student Nadia Zamri, from Marston, to call the congregation to prayer.
Nadia, who was one of a few pupils who was able to read the Qu’ran when she joined the school, said she was ‘excited’ about being chosen.
Dr Hargey added: “There is a nexus between Christianity and Islam. We both revere Abraham as a very important figure, a father figure. It is up to Muslims and Christians in this great city of ours to show the way for the rest of the country.”
[DF — Wonder when Dr Taj Hargey will be reciprocating so that the Reverend can deliver a sermon at Friday prayers in his mosque]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Mother ‘Knifed Girl of 3 and Dissolved Her Body in Acid’
A girl of three was stabbed to death by her schizophrenic mother who then tried to dissolve the body in acid, a court heard yesterday.
Alia Ahmed Jama’s body was discovered by police in a badly decomposed state on a bedroom floor at her home.
The day before, social workers had visited the rented property amid concerns it was unsuitable for the child and questions over whether she was being adequately ‘supervised’.
But they left after deciding that Alia seemed healthy and ‘happy enough’, and told her 25-year-old mother, Iman Omar Yousef, that they would be checking on Alia’s medical records.
The court heard that later that evening, Yousef, a Somali asylum seeker, took the child to a police station in Birmingham city centre where she demanded officers find them new accommodation in a hostel.
After being told there was none available, the pair returned to their home in the city’s Erdington suburb on foot and by bus — the last time Alia was seen alive. The next morning, Yousef travelled to Leicester to the home of her mother — who was immediately worried that Alia was not with her.
After Yousef told an aunt that Alia was ‘in a safe place’, her mother rang police who forced entry into Yousef’s home.
Prosecutor James Burbidge QC told the court that officers were confronted by the ‘truly shocking sight’ of the child’s decomposed body in a room thick with the smell of acid.
Yousef had covered her daughter’s torso with bin liners.
Mr Burbidge said Yousef had allegedly poured a substance believed to be sulphuric acid over her daughter’s torso, which had ‘penetrated deeply’.
He added: ‘As a result, it is difficult for the experts to be specific about the cause of death.
‘She hadn’t drunk any (corrosive) fluid. It is likely she was deeply unconscious or dead when it was applied to her body.’
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Nurse Caught on CCTV Turning Off Paralysed Patient’s Life Support Machine
A paralysed patient has been left severely brain damaged after a nurse switched off his life support machine in an incident captured on CCTV.
Violeta Aylward, an agency nurse working for the NHS, was caught on camera turning off the ventilator keeping quadriplegic Jamie Merrett alive.
The 37-year-old, left paralysed from the neck down following a car accident in 2002, had a bedside camera set up at his home after becoming concerned about the standard of care he was receiving.
Footage recorded only a few days after it was installed shows Miss Aylward fiddling with the ventilator before a high-pitched warning tone sounds, indicating it is switched off.
Mr Merrett is then left fighting for life as the nurse panics about what to do next, unable to restart the ventilator or properly operate resuscitation equipment.
It was not until 21 minutes later that paramedics who rushed to the scene managed to turn the life support machine back on.
But by that time, Mr Merrett had suffered serious brain damage, which has left him with the mental capacity of a young child.
Before the incident, he was able to talk, use a wheelchair and operate a computer using voice-activated technology.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Yob Branded the Most Out-of-Control Child in Britain Aged Just 4 is Jailed for Rape After Getting Away With a 19-Year Reign of Terror
A yob described as Britain’s most out-of-control child when he was just four has been jailed after he raped a teenager.
Wesley Gordon, who has a criminal record stretching back to his youth, gained national notoriety when he was expelled from school for tipping custard over a dinner lady.
Later he was expelled from another school aged 13, arrested over the death of a pensioner but never charged in 2007 and convicted of beating his girlfriend and a police officer last year.
Incredibly, Gordon was never sent to prison during his 19-year reign of terror, and was handed a reprieve from a judge after the attack on his girlfriend in which he struck her ten times.
However, he was sent to a young offenders’ institution aged 15 for motoring offences where he served just five months of a ten-month sentence.
Gordon, now 23, was finally jailed for seven-and-a-half years after raping a 19-year old-woman in a house in Sheffield.
He initially denied the offence when he was questioned by police but pleaded guilty at Sheffield Crown Court.
Detective Constable Chris Campbell who investigated the attack said: ‘The victim was a 19-year-old female who he met at a social gathering and the offence occurred at the same place.
‘Gordon was arrested at the scene on the same day. It was a very protracted investigation and I am very happy with the outcome.’
In 2007, he was arrested, but never charged, following the death of 80-year-old Lewis Wiles, who hit his head on the pavement following an incident outside a shop.
Mr Wiles was pushed to the ground by a teenager while helping out at his son’s newsagent’s shop.
Gordon claimed he had gone to the aid of the pensioner in Hillsborough, Sheffield.
He later told an inquest that the incident had ‘wrecked’ his life and said he had been forced to move out of Sheffield because of his reputation after his arrest.
| [Return to headlines] |
Iraq Al Qaeda More Lethal as Homegrown Insurgency
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26, 2010 (Reuters) — Al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch has evolved into a homegrown, more lethal and bolder insurgency comprised of Iraqi fighters hardened in U.S. prisons and posing a challenge to Iraqi forces, military officials say.
InsanelyCheapFlights.Travelspot.usThe insurgency has been strategically weakened by the deaths of leaders, and both its numbers and the territory in which it can maneuver have shrunk since 2006-07, when Sunni tribal chiefs turned on it and joined forces with the U.S. military.
But what Iraqi officials call the “third generation” of al Qaeda in Iraq may be more difficult to fight than before because its fighters can blend in, know the weaknesses of Iraqi society, and are more interested in making a spectacular splash with their attacks than in battlefield victories.
Their assaults are aimed at grabbing attention and rattling the population at a time when sectarian tensions are fraught because of the failure of politicians to agree on a new Iraqi government seven months after an inconclusive election.
“We face the third generation of al-Qaeda now, a generation that mostly graduated from (U.S. detention camps) Bucca, Cropper and other such places,” said Major General Hassan al-Baidhani, chief of staff for the Baghdad operations command.
Al Qaeda has shown “a new type of boldness,” attacking heavily protected targets and security forces head on, Baidhani told Reuters. “This strategy depends basically on shock. They are not looking for success as much as looking for attention.”
Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is battling to retain his job, opposed by the Sunni-backed, secular Iraqiya alliance of ex-premier Iyad Allawi and some erstwhile Shi’ite allies.
If Iraqiya ends up being sidelined, the Sunnis who voted for it in March may react in outrage and return to supporting the Sunni Islamist insurgency, security officials say.
In the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the Bush administration accused Saddam Hussein’s regime of having links to al Qaeda as part of its campaign to bolster support for war.
No ties were ever proven but al Qaeda was quick to take advantage of the post-invasion chaos to establish a presence in Iraq.
The first generation of al Qaeda on Iraq’s battlefields were primarily Arabs from abroad. The second was a mix of foreign and Iraqi Sunnis angered by the invasion and the rise to power of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority after the fall of Saddam, Sunni.
Now as Iraqi security forces take center stage after U.S. troops halted combat operations in August prior to a full withdrawal in 2011, they face a homegrown threat composed of young radicals who fervently believe in jihad, or holy war.
Weakness of Society
“And therein lies the danger because they know the weak points of Iraqi society,” said Baidhani, who has documented al Qaeda activities over the last four years.
On June 13, al Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, sent a wave of suicide bombers against the well-guarded Central Bank in Baghdad, killing 15 people. The following month, a suicide bomber attacked Saudi-owned al-Arabiya news channel, another well-protected, high-profile target.
On September 5, suicide bombers killed 12 when they swarmed a Baghdad army base, where just two weeks earlier a lone suicide bomber had managed to kill 57 army recruits and soldiers.
The attack on the army base took officials by surprise, said a senior police official who asked not to be named. Up till then, military strategists had believed insurgents would have no success using suicide bombers against military installations.
“The problem is our enemy’s intelligence is stronger than our intelligence,” the official said. “They know the timings of our duties, food, rest, hours when patrols switch, the type and the number of weapons at our bases.”
U.S. military leaders say the transformation of al Qaeda in Iraq coincided with strikes against it, including the killing of its top two leaders Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and the cutting of its links to al Qaeda abroad, this year.
“They have attempted to wean themselves off a foreign leadership structure,” U.S. Brigadier General Ralph Baker said.
Al Qaeda cells are trying to move back into strongholds like the districts of Adhamiya and Fadhil in the capital, and distributing threatening leaflets to cow the public.
But the group is unlikely to be able to succeed at its long-term goal of bringing down the government and Iraq’s nascent democracy, and establishing a Sunni Islamist caliphate.
“We don’t see al Qaeda as an existential threat to the Iraqi government any more,” Baker said.
| — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Tareq Aziz, The “Human Face” Of Saddam Hussein, Sentenced to Death
Former foreign minister and deputy prime minister, he was used primarily for international relations. The ruling, appealable, refers to his responsibility in the suppression of religious parties. Already sentenced to 15 years in prison, after a heart attack he is currently in hospital.
Baghdad (AsiaNews) — Tareq Aziz, former foreign minister and deputy prime minister under Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death by the Iraqi Supreme Court. Along with Aziz the former Interior Minister Sadoun Shaker and Saddam’s private secretary, Abed Hamoud were also sentenced to death.
According to state television, the sentence refers to the role that Aziz played in the elimination of religious parties. It regards the Shiite political groups, including the Dawa Party, of which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is now part.
Court spokesman, Abdul Mohammed Sahib, did not specify the date of execution of the sentence which, furthermore, may be subject to appeal. In any case, the death penalty must be confirmed by the Presidents Council of Iraq.
Aziz, 73, was born near Mosul, with a degree in English and literature, he was considered the “human face” of the Saddam regime, mainly used for international relations. For eight years, foreign minister during the First Gulf War, he was subsequently appointed deputy prime minister. A Chaldean Christian, he has always made little account of his religious affiliation, in favour of his Arab and Iraqi sentiments. In February 2003 he was also received by Pope John Paul II, in last minute attempts by the regime to prevent the invasion of the country.
On surrender to the Americans, he had already been sentenced to 15 years in prison for the execution of 42 merchants accused of illegal trafficking. Since January this year, following a heart attack he has been in hospital.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Tariq Aziz, The Man Who Was the International Face of Saddam’s Iraq, Is Sentenced to Death
Former Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz was sentenced to death today for persecuting Shia groups as part of Saddam’s regime.
Iraqi High Tribunal spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Sahib did not say when the 74-year-old former foreign minister would go to the gallows.
Aziz has 30 days to launch an appeal.
Aziz, the only Christian in Saddam’s mainly Sunni inner circle, was wearing a blue suit and sat alone in the court.
He bowed his head and frequently grasped the handrail in front of him, as the judge read out the verdict.
His Jordan-based lawyer, Badee Izzat Aref, accused the government of orchestrating the verdict to divert attention from recent revelations about prisoner abuse by Iraqi security forces contained in U.S. military documents released last week by the whistleblower site WikiLeaks.
‘We are discussing this issue and what next step we should take,’ Aref said.
‘This sentence is not fair and it is politically motivated.’
Aziz became internationally known as the dictator’s defender and a fierce American critic first as foreign minister after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and later as a deputy prime minister.
His meeting with Secretary of State James A. Baker in Geneva in January 1991 failed to prevent the 1991 Gulf War.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Father Drove 100 Miles Towing Tiny Caravan… With Seven Children and Three Adults Inside
A father drove 100 miles towing a small caravan crammed full with ten people — including his own family.
Shocked motorists phoned police when they spotted children peering through the curtains of Sameer Mirza’s 10ft caravan on the A55 in north Wales.
The tyres appeared squashed because it was so full, carrying seven children aged five to 14 and their mothers including Mirza’s wife and their children.
Police finally caught up with him on the A4244 and pulled him over at a petrol station near Deiniolen, north Wales.
They were shocked to see the ten passengers, none of whom was wearing seatbelts, step out.
Mirza, 46, told police he was taking his wife, three children and members of two other families for a picnic in Llanberis.
Yesterday he was banned from driving for two years and fined £900.
Safety experts said the weight of the people in the caravan would have made it unstable and the consequences in an accident would have been ‘disastrous’.
Mirza, of Sheldon near Stoke-on-Trent, admitted dangerous driving, but blamed the offence on ignorance of the law.
He and two other fathers had been travelling in the car, all wearing seatbelts.
Magistrates at Caernarfon were told Mirza works for an airline based in Saudi Arabia and spends up to six weeks abroad and was unable to do unpaid community work.
The court ordered him to pay £215 costs and take an extended test before he can drive again.
[…]
uk: Female doctor who sold dangerous diet pills to fund lavish lifestyle is ordered to pay back £1million
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323921/Female-doctor-sold-dangerous-diet-pills-fund-lavish-lifestyle-ordered-pay-1million.html
A shamed doctor who lived a lavish lifestyle of luxury homes and fast cars selling dangerous diet pills was today ordered to pay back more than £1million.
Sudesh Madan, 58, was jailed in May for 18 months for selling the Phentermine and Diethylpropion slimming pills at Easy Slim clinics across the UK.
The potentially dangerous drugs were sold to unsuspecting customers at £20-a-week for a course of pills to suppress their appetite.
Her lucrative operation netted more than £1million in eight just years and provided a luxury lifestyle including property in Dubai, luxury holidays to Thailand and a fleet of fast cars.
Officers raiding Madan’s home in Romford, Essex, found £48,000 cash stashed under her bed, which has since been seized.
Today at St Albans Crown Court, Madan was ordered to repay £1,050,000 to the Crown within six months or face a further four years behind bars.
A spokesman for Hertfordshire Constabulary said: ‘Madan’s greedy and callous operation resulted in a significant financial benefit.
‘The profits paid for properties in the UK and overseas, expensive cars with personalised number plates, and luxurious holidays.
‘The confiscation order represents the realistic amount of money the Constabulary can gain from her assets.’
Madan was arrested in December 2009 after a probe into a fatal car crash in Hatfield in 2009.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Cashflow to Caucasus Terror Cells Killed
Russia’s anti-terrorist committee has confirmed to RT that it has busted a foreign financial network used to supply money to militants in the North Caucasus.
Officials say funding from abroad enabled the recent surge of terror attacks in the region, namely in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia.
The money was brought to Russia by ‘mules’, but the security forces are withholding the names of the countries they came from and the exact sums involved.
Officials say a whole terror financing network has been uncovered and an investigation is underway to reveal exactly who is financing terrorism in the Caucasus.
The network involved dummy corporations and banks. The money was handed over to militant leaders, like Doku Umarov, who is on the international most wanted list and is believed to have masterminded the Moscow Metro bombings in March, which claimed over 40 lives and left over 100 people injured.
The militant leaders are believed to have used some of the money to fund terror acts and kept a larger sum for themselves.
The secret services say it is likely that foreign funding of terrorism in Russia is still going on, despite the recent sting, and they continue to hunt for those responsible.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Ancient Bugs Reveal Early Link From India to Asia
FIFTY-million-year-old insects preserved in amber are helping to rewrite the story of India’s almighty crash into the Eurasian continent, suggesting that for as long as a few million years before the collision, India was connected to Asia by archipelagos.
India spent tens of millions of years as an island before colliding with Asia. Yet the fossil record contains no evidence that unique species evolved on the subcontinent during this time, so India may not have been as isolated as it seemed to be.
To study this further, Jes Rust of the University of Bonn, Germany, and colleagues collected some 150 kilograms of amber from the Cambay region of Gujarat, India. The amber dates from just before the India-Asia collision and contains more than 700 arthropods, preserved with “lifelike, microscopic fidelity” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1007407107).
Many of the insects are close relatives of species found in Eurasia at the time, indicating that there may have been island chains linking India and southern Asia by 50 million years ago.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Hamid Karzai Admits Office Receives ‘Bags of Money’ From Iran
Mr Karzai said that the “bags of money” were “done by various friendly countries to help the presidential office and to help the expenses”.
He said that one or twice a year Iran gives his office up to $975,000 (£621,000), adding that Washington did the same and had known about the Iranian assistance for years.
| [Return to headlines] |
Maldives: Foreign Couple Mocked as “Infidels” And “Swine” Throughout Resort’s ‘Wedding Ceremony’
“You are swine” and “the children that you bear from this marriage will all be bastard swine,” a tourist couple renewing their marriage vows in the Maldives were told in a ‘traditional Maldivian’ ceremony conducted in Dhivehi at Vilu Reef Beach and Spa Resort.
“Your marriage is not a valid one. You are not the kind of people who can have a valid marriage. One of you is an infidel. The other, too, is an infidel — and we have reason to believe —an atheist, who does not even believe in an infidel religion,” the ‘celebrant’ tells the couple, who appear completely unaware of the humiliation they are being subjected to.
A 15-minute video of the ceremony was uploaded on YouTube on October 24 2010 by a member of staff. Vilu Reef Manager Mohamed Rasheed told Minivan News that the staff member who uploaded the video did it as “a joke”, without “realising the seriousness of the potential consequences”.
Vilu Reef Beach and Spa Resort advertises itself as a place where couples can renew their wedding vows “hand in hand against a golden sunset backdrop” and where their “everlasting love” can be sealed by a “kaleidoscope of romantic hues” that covers the sky during the sunset.
In the video the ‘celebrant’ briefs the couple in English, prior to the ceremony, that it will be conducted according to “not only Maldivian” but also “Arabic and Islamic” norms.
Two wedding rings inside an open coconut, which appears to be lined with mother of pearl, are in front of the couple along with two fresh coconuts. The couple seem dressed for the ceremony, the woman in white as favoured by Western brides.
“Don’t look at her chest”, a man — possibly the videographer — is heard saying as the woman leans over to take a sip from the coconut. She adjusts her neckline.
Men, about ten or more, surround the area both outside and inside the palm fronds, which appears to be a make-shift wedding venue.
The celebrant twirls his thumbs over a piece of paper that he appears to be studying with deep concentration. A male voice asks him if the document is “something new”. He replies that it is “the seventh Article of the Penal Code”.
The document, of which there is a brief close-up in the video, has absolutely no relation to marriage laws in the Maldives. Words that are legible on the document refer to “staff employment”, suggesting that it is a document relating to employment regulations.
Asking the couple and other ‘officials’ to raise their hands as is customary for Muslim prayers, the ‘celebrant’ begins his marriage vows.
“Fornication has been legalised according to Article six, 1.11 of the Penal Code”, he chants in a tone favoured by religious scholars. “That is, frequent fornication by homosexuals. Most fornication is by males,” he continues.
“Research has shown that men have a higher sex drive than women,” he says. “According to Article 8 to 6 of the Penal Code, converting to Islam, or circumcision, is not desirable under any circumstances.
“Germs of anger and hatred will breed and drip from the tips of your penises,” he says.
The ‘celebrant’ then switches from his improvised “Islamic and Maldivian marriage laws” to reading aloud from the document in front of him in the same ‘religious’ tone. This time, what he chants to the couple is to do with terms of employment.
When he returns to the ‘marriage vows’, he refers to certain Articles of the Constitution and combines ‘Section e” and “Section f” to create the word “balhu”, which in Dhivehi means “swine”. ‘E’ in Dhivehi is the letter ‘baa’ and ‘F’ the letter ‘lhaviyani’.
The ‘celebrant’ mixes the two letters to make the word ‘balhu’, the full version of which, as used by the ‘celebrant’, is ‘nagoo balhu’. The literal translation of the term is ‘crooked tail’, believed to refer to a pig’s tail, and is considered to be one of the worst insults in the Dhivehi language.
“You are swine according to the Constitution,” he declares, solemnly.
He then asks the couple to stand up and hold hands. The ‘officials’, too, stand up and place their hands on the couples’. They form a séance-like circle and the ‘celebrant’ begins chanting.
“Aleelaan, baleelaan…”, he begins. What he is chanting is not a verse from the Qur’an, or marriage vows in Dhivehi, but are the words of a popular Dhivehi children’s game.
Words of the game, too, are changed to say “black swine” instead of what is contained in the original.
“Before buggering a chicken, check if the hole is clean. That is because the people of the countries that you are from are familiar with the taste of the ****holes of chicken,” he chants, still with hands held over the couples’.
“Do not treat with kindness people against whom violence is being committed. Commit more violence against victims of violence. You are not people who have been sent to this world to commit violence.”
He then returns to the matter of staff salaries, which he continues to chant in the same tone as he had done the insults. “Do not complain too much about salaries, or matters regarding salaries. That is against the Penal Code. This is not something I am saying for your benefit — it is a law that we have made.”
He begins to chant loudly about “black swine”, stringing insult after insult and delivering it in the same rather ominous tone that Maldivian religious figures choose to deliver their sermons in.
“You fornicate and make a lot of children. You drink and you eat pork. Most of the children that you have are marked with spots and blemishes… these children that you have are bastards,” he continues solemnly.
Someone else is heard at this point to tell the ‘celebrant’ to “say a little bit more, and then quit.”
The concluding chant is delivered in a gentler, softer voice: “Keep fornicating frequently, and keep spreading hatred among people. The children you will have from this marriage will all be bastard swine.”
While the couple are putting rings on each other’s fingers, someone is heard saying that the recording should stop. “Don’t you worry about it,” says someone else, and the recording continues.
“Aren’t they going to suck mouth?” someone is heard asking. “Make them suck mouth”, it is urged. ‘Sucking mouth’ is a term used by Maldivians to denigrate the act of kissing.
“So now, in Maldivian law, in Islam, you are already married”, says the ‘celebrant’, returning to English. The hapless couple are then told to relax and enjoy the celebrations that are to follow, by the end of which a certificate of their nuptials will be ready for them.
Once the ceremony is concluded, the celebrant, who is dressed in a shirt and tie — with the shirt left to hang loose over a traditional Maldivian sarong — swaggers out of the makeshift wedding venue — tugging at his tie and proclaiming himself “President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed.”
The celebrant, Vilu Reef Manager Rasheed told Minivan News, is an assistant Food and Beverage Manager named Hussein Didi. As he leaves the wedding venue having concluded his job, someone announces his presence, as “Ghaazee Hussein Didi”.
A Ghaazee is the Arabic name for a judge or magistrate, also adopted to mean the same in Dhivehi.
People clap loudly as the couple, whose marriage vows have just been mocked in some of the filthiest language known to Dhivehi, are videoed making their way to the next part of their ceremony — the planting of a coconut tree to mark the occasion.
Various types of insults about the woman and the man, their clothing and demeanour, are being spoken throughout in the form of a running commentary in a sports video.
As the bride bends down to plant the coconut tree, a man is heard is exclaiming, “Can see her breasts!” The ‘commentator’ observes, “She is wearing something”, he knows, he says, “because my beard has gone grey watching those things… I have seen so many of them now that I don’t even want to look any more when I see them.”
The groom, who is watering the new coconut tree which they have just planted, is totally unaware of the manner in which his wife and her breasts are being discussed by the group of Maldivian men ‘officiating’ at the renewal of their wedding vows.
‘Celebrant’ Didi tells the couple they should return soon to check on the progress of their plant, testament to what had taken place on the island that day.
The video concludes with the ‘commentator’ repeatedly urging the ‘celebrant’ to make the couple ‘suck mouths, suck mouths’.
The resort’s Manager Rasheed was unable to tell Minivan News how much the occasion had cost the couple or where they were from.
Asked if the couple had been made aware of the nature of the ‘wedding vows’ they had taken, Rasheed said they had been sent pictures but not the video.
“Our package includes sending them pictures on the CD the very same night”, he said. Rasheed added that the resort does not have a written ‘khuthuba’ or sermon from which to read, nor is the role of the celebrant undertaken by a designated person.
“It is done on a rotating basis. We have been doing it for ten years now, and from a very small start, it has grown into a very successful part of what we offer at Vilu,” he said.
Rasheed said he had become aware of the nature of the ceremony conducted by Didi shortly after it happened. He had banned Didi from performing any more ceremonies, but did not feel it was necessary to take any further action, until the video appeared on YouTube.
The staff member who uploaded the video, Ali Shareef, a shop assistant, is not being disciplined or investigated further, Rasheed said. He complied with the request by the management to remove the video from YouTube.
The ‘celebrant’, Didi, however is currently under investigation by the Head Office in Male’, Sun Travel and Tours.
Minivan News has learned that the ‘wedding package’ offered by Vilu Reef Resort lasts an hour, costs US$1300 which includes the services of a ‘celebrant’, a sailing trip and Maldivian music and dancing.
The happy couple can obtain photographs of their beautiful ceremony in the Maldivian sunset on Vilu Reef Resort for an additional US$440.
CEO of Sun Travel Ahmed Shakir was unavailable for comment.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Amnesty Urges Probe of Baloch Killings and ‘Torture’
London, 26 Oct. (AKI) — The Pakistani government must investigate the torture and killings of more than 40 Baloch leaders and political activists in the southwest over the past four months, human rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday.
“The Pakistani government must act immediately to provide justice for the growing list of atrocities in Balochistan,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director, in a statement.
“Baloch political leaders and activists are clearly being targeted and the government must do much more to end this alarming trend,” he said.
Baloch activists, politicians and student leaders are among those who have been targeted in enforced disappearances, abductions, arbitrary arrests and cases of torture and other ill-treatment, according to Amnesty.
Among the latest victims of the ongoing violence are activists Faqir Mohammad Baloch and Zahoor Baloch, whose bodies were discovered in the district of Mastung on 21 October.
Faqir Mohammad Baloch, a poet and member of the Voice of Missing Baloch Missing Persons campaign group, was abducted on 23 September.
Zahoor Baloch, a member of the Baloch Student Organisation-Azad was abducted on 23 August.
According to media reports, both were killed with a single bullet wound to the head at point blank range and showed signs of having been tortured, Amnesty said.
The discovery of the two men’s bodies is part of a growing trend of “kill and dump” operations being conducted across Balochistan, the group noted.
Previously, the bodies of missing persons were rarely recovered, Amnesty noted.
Unidentified gunmen have in recent months abducted and shot dead several members of the Balochistan National Party and two Baloch lawyers, as well as several activists, according to Amnesty.
The killings have stoked political tensions in Balochistan and Baloch armed groups have carried out reprisal killings, Amnesty reported.
The province has a decades-long history of insurgency aimed at greater autonomy.
The Pakistan national government has tried to suppress opposition by stepping up the presence of the military in the region, Amnesty noted.
Amnesty called on all sides in the conflict to “respect human rights and stop all torture, enforced disappearances, abductions, targeted killings and indiscriminate attacks.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Rawalpindi: Police Stop Mass in Front of Gordon College Chapel
Local authorities apply law 144 / c, which bans any gathering of more than two individuals. The Christians had organized the mass to protest against the illegal occupation of the Protestant chapel since October 19 by a group of Islamic extremists ..
Islamabad (AsiaNews) — The situation remains tense between Christians and local authorities in Rawalpindi (Punjab) over the illegal occupation of the Christian chapel of Gordon College, a Presbyterian Church University. Yesterday, the police stopped the celebration of a Mass organized by the Protestant community in front of the chapel. To prevent the gathering local authorities applied law 144 / c, which bans any gathering of more than two individuals. More than 20 police trucks arrived on site, dispersing the crowd.
On 19 October, a group of 20 armed men occupied the chapel and have barricaded themselves inside. These are Muslim faithful who have the backing of the local government with false documents claiming ownership of the building.
The act has drawn the protests of both Christians and Muslims. In recent days, the All Pakistan Christian Action Committee (Apcac), the local Christian community and non-governmental organizations took to the streets of Rawalpindi to demand justice and freedom of worship for Christians.
Nina Robinson Asghar, head of Apcac, said: “The culprits have made fake documents of the property, they want to demolish the Church and construct a commercial center,but we will never allow this to happen.”
The Chapel of the Gordon College was reopened in April 2010 after eight years of closure. It currently belongs to a government trust fund, which should hand it to the Christian community, however, according to Pakistani law, the church could also be sold to third. The illegal occupation is an attempt to steal the building, a similar incident occurred in April, but the police intervened, arresting the culprits.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Real Change: Islam’s Establishment Will Mark the End of American Reign: HuT Pakistan (Press Release)
video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-GpMq5y16A
On Friday, 5th of November 2010, Hizb ut-Tahrir will hold Khilafah rallies across the country. These rallies will be held under the title of Real change- Khilafah’s establishment will mark the end of American agent rulers The purpose of these rallies is to make the Ummah aware about the real change that will actually bring their life from darkness to light.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
UK Had Too Few Troops in Afghanistan, Says Major General
British forces in southern Afghanistan were under-resourced until the US troop surge earlier this year, the spokesman for the head of the Armed Forces claimed today.
Major General Gordon Messenger said there was ‘insufficient’ manpower in Helmand 18 months ago and that his own brigade had been ‘stretched’ and unable to venture into certain areas.
US President Barack Obama’s deployment of an extra 30,000 troops came from ‘the realisation that the scale of the challenge was not matched by the resources allocated to it’, he told the Commons Defence Select Committee.
MPs on the committee questioned why it had taken so long into the nine-year conflict for the Nato coalition to work out that more troops were needed.
Ministers have repeatedly insisted that all requests from military commanders in Afghanistan have been met.
Gen Messenger, strategic communications officer to the Chief of the Defence Staff, said only now had adequate resources been in place for long enough to be making a positive impact.
‘For the first time now we are seeing enough resources in place that match the security challenges and other challenges that we face, and they’ve been there long enough to have an effect,’ he said.
‘In places like Helmand, which is as bad as it gets in terms of security across Afghanistan, we’ve started seeing far more positive indicators.’
He said that when he returned from Afghanistan, where he had been serving as a brigade commander until April last year, there was under-resourcing across the southern region.
‘The obvious point at that time was that there were insufficient resources being allocated to the challenge in southern Afghanistan,’ he told the committee.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
India — Japan: Singh in Tokyo to Increase Trade and Boost Military Cooperation
India needs foreign investments to grow, whilst Japan needs closer trading relations with other nations to reduce its reliance on China. Both nations want to contain China’s growing military power.
Tokyo (AsiaNews/Agencies) — India and Japan want to increase trade and develop closer strategic and military ties to counter Chinese military expansion. A number of agreements are expected to be announced at the end of a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Japanese counterpart, Naoto Kan, today in Tokyo.
Singh is on an official visit to Japan until tomorrow accompanied by a large delegation that includes top government officials and Indian business leaders. For him, an India-Japan strategic and global partnership is “a factor of peace, prosperity and stability in Asia and the world.”
Trade between Japan and China has grown rapidly in recent years; however, recent territorial disputes in the East China Sea have pushed Tokyo to seek closer ties with other nations.
Indian and Japanese officials are studying ways to open up India’s markets to Japanese companies, which would benefit from lower taxes, cheaper labour and the possibility of selling their products in India. In turn, the latter would receive foreign investments to finance its growth and infrastructural development.
Last year, trade between Asia’s second and third-largest economies stood at US$ 12.5 billion, just 4 per cent of Japan’s trade with China. Japanese investments in India topped US$ 6.6 billion in 2009.
Mining and refining of rare earth metals, crucial for Japan’s high tech industry, is area in which the two countries can work together. For Tokyo, this is crucial because of Beijing’s decision to stop selling Japan such metals in the wake of recent incidents between the two countries.
India also wants to develop nuclear power for civilian use and is willing to ease access into its markets for Japanese products, including cars. It also wants Japan to open up its own markets to Indian-made generic drugs, steel and jewellery so as to boost trade.
On the nuclear issue, Tokyo wants guarantees that any technology transferred to India will be used only in the civilian field.
The two countries are also looking at closer military cooperation and enhanced international security. Both want to contain China’s growing naval power, especially in the Indian Ocean. New Delhi is especially concerned about China’s growing ties with Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
In Tokyo, Singh is expected to meet Emperor Akihito and address the Japanese Diet. Subsequently, he will travel to Malaysia and then Vietnam for the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), where he will meet Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, and other leaders.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
NASA Chief Says Visit to China Sets Stage for Future Cooperation
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden met with his Chinese counterpart and visited China’s main human spaceflight launch facility during a weeklong trip the NASA chief credited with laying a foundation for further dialogue and future cooperation between the U.S. and Chinese space programs.
“Although my visit did not include consideration of any specific proposals for future cooperation, I believe that my delegation’s visit to China increased mutual understanding on the issue of human spaceflight and space exploration, which can form the basis for further dialogue and cooperation in a manner that is consistent with the national interests of both of our countries,” Bolden said in an Oct. 25 statement.
Bolden, who was in China Oct. 16-21 as the head of a small delegation, embarked on his trip amid objections from several U.S. lawmakers, among them Reps. Frank Wolf of Virginia, John Culberson of Texas and Robert Aderholt of Alabama — all Republicans serving on the House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Oldest Modern Human Outside of Africa Found
Chinese fossil challenges traditional early-human time line, study says.
A fossil human jawbone discovered in southern China is upsetting conventional notions of when our ancestors migrated out of Africa.
The mandible, unearthed by paleontologists in China’s Zhiren Cave in 2007, sports a distinctly modern feature: a prominent chin. But the bone is undeniably 60,000 years older than the next oldest Homo sapiens remains in China, scientists say.
In fact, at about a hundred thousand years old, the Chinese fossil is “the oldest modern human outside of Africa,” said study co-author Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
(Also see “Oldest Skeleton of Human Ancestor Found.”)
Popular theory states that Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa about 60,000 years ago, at which point modern humans quickly replaced early human species such as Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis across the world.
Finding such an ancient example of a modern human in China would drastically alter the time line of human migration. The find may also mean that modern humans in China were mingling—and possibly even interbreeding—with other human species for 50,000 or 60,000 years.
(Related: “Neanderthals, Humans Interbred—First Solid DNA Evidence.”)
What’s more, the find seems to suggest that anatomically modern humans had arrived in China long before the species began acting human.
For example, symbolic thought is a distinctly human trait that involves using things such as beads and drawings to represent objects, people, and events. The first strong evidence for this trait doesn’t appear in the archaeological record in China until 30,000 years ago, Trinkaus said…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Climate Change Film an Inconvenient Truth for Australian Schools
Climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth will be included in the national curriculum as part of a bid to educate students on environmental sustainability across all subjects.
It would be the first time the film following one-time US vice president Al Gore’s climate change campaign has been included in the NSW school English curriculum.
Education ministers agreed two years ago a “focus on environmental sustainability would be integrated across the curriculum”.
As a result of the agreement, the national curriculum which is due to be finished in December, will contain lessons on climate change and sustainability across English, maths, science and even history.
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Stakelbeck: Chavez, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda: The Cocaine Connection
Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez differ in many ways, but they share a common enemy — the United States.
According to U.S. officials, they also have another common interest: the multi-billion dollar drug trade.
My latest report shows how Chavez and Islamic terrorist groups are benefiting from the trans-Atlantic drug trade.
Click on the viewer at the link above to watch the video.
| — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck | [Return to headlines] |
Students Attacked in Mexico
Three students were hospitalised after a brutal robbery of a disco outside Mexico City
Three Danish business school students were injured Sunday night during an armed robbery at a discothèque just outside Mexico City, reports Viborg Stifts Folkeblad.
Around 40 students from Mercantec Business School in the Jutland town of Viborg were in Mexico on a school trip. Several of the students were reportedly at the venue when the violent action took place.
According to the students, the thieves were armed with machine guns and pistols. One o of the attackers reported struck a student with a pistol and another student was kicked in the stomach, while the third had his ribs broken.
All were taken to hospital and are recovering well, according to a school spokesman.
Although the spokesman said the school had sent its students to Mexico for the past 12 years it will no longer do so.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Denmark: New Immigrants at Centre of ‘Ghetto’ Strategy
Government will combat ghettos by preventing high concentrations of immigrants in single housing areas
Immigrants from non-EU countries will be restricted from living in council housing officially classified as “ghettos”, the government is expected to announce today.
The ban tops a list of 30 proposals included in the Liberal-Conservative government’s long-awaited strategy for altering the residential makeup of the country’s 29 public housing areas labelled as ghettos.
In addition, the plan will also ban families from living in one of those areas if a person living in the household has immigrated to Denmark.
Other recommendations expected to be announced include razing a total of 2,000 flats, mandatory childcare for children whose Danish is below level for their age and making it easier for housing associations to evict families with multiple complaints against them.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Geert Wilders: Deport ‘Lazy’ Immigrants
Dutch Labour leader Job Cohen and anti-Islam Freedom Party PVV leader Geert Wilders clashed today in parliament during a debate on integration legislation for new immigrants.
Mr Wilders claimed Mr Cohen’s Labour Party does nothing to tackle immigrants who show a “half-hearted attitude” towards the mandatory integration course. Mr Cohen said deportation of immigrants who don’t fully participate in the course should be a last resort and that the current system of fining those who fail to attend the courses should be given a chance first.
Mr Wilders then took a hard line with the Labour leader. “If you don’t want to integrate, turn to Mr Cohen. He’ll say: ‘Just pay a small fine, then go back to your lazy bed.’ The Freedom Party and the cabinet want to implement the ultimate sanction, one that’s only reasonable. If you want to go back to sleep instead of attending your integration course, then you’ll not merely have to get out of bed, you’ll have to get out of the country,” the PVV leader said.
Mr Cohen accused Mr Wilders of wanting to see immigrants fail when it comes to integration. The PVV chief challenged Mr Cohen to produce evidence to substantiate his claim. The Labour leader then referred to statements Mr Wilders had made on Danish TV, when he had called for millions of Muslims who had committed a criminal offence to be deported from Europe.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Police Stop Boat Full of Illegal ‘Palestinian’ Immigrants
Catania, 26 Oct. (AKI) — A 30-metre fishing boat transporting 128 people who claimed to be Palestinians was intercepted by police off the coast of Sicily early Tuesday. The vessel was stopped in the province of Catania, around 170 kilometres east of Palermo.
Police detained the passengers, as well as seven crew members believed to be responsible for trafficking the illegal immigrants to Italy.
Coastguard began trailing the boat at around midnight.
The conservative Italian government has stepped up efforts to combat illegal immigration promising to rapidly repatriate migrants who don’t qualify for political asylum or other forms of protection. Would-be illegal immigrants seeking to enter Italy by boat mostly set sail from northern Africa and head for the southern coast.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: is David Cameron Diluting His Pledge to Cap Immigrants? EU Deal With India Threatens British Jobs
David Cameron opened the door to a new wave of immigration yesterday by signalling that the Government will let businesses bring in more staff from overseas.
The Prime Minister told business leaders the planned immigration cap will not ‘impede’ companies recruiting skilled foreign staff.
His words brought claims that the Tories are watering down their tough stance on new arrivals to placate the Liberal Democrats.
Critics also warned that a Brussels trade deal with India, currently being drawn up, would lead to ‘British jobs for Indian workers’.
Under the terms of the deal, Indian companies could transfer staff to the UK with no limit on numbers and no guarantee that the jobs would first be offered to homegrown experts.
That could see thousands of Indian workers flock to the UK, making it far more difficult for the Government to keep a stranglehold on numbers.
The final details of the level of the immigration cap — a flagship Tory policy — will not be revealed until Christmas.
It is expected to lead to a fixed annual limit below 100,000 for non-EU migrants, but Mr Cameron indicated that the number of business transfers of Tier 1, or highly-skilled, migrants is set to rise.
Since July there has been a limit of 600 Tier 1 migrants coming to Britain each month. Business leaders have complained that the cap has limited their ability to recruit and transfer the staff they need.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
Equality and LGBTI Rights
EUOBSERVER / FOCUS — As a media partner of the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association’s (ILGA-Europe) annual conference in The Hague on 28 October, EUobserver puts the spotlight on the area of freedom and respect for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people in Europe.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ex-Muslim: Proposal That Islam is Tolerant is Fallacious, Dangerous
Though most Muslims are tolerant and peace-loving, Islam itself is not a religion of tolerance, a former Muslim asserted.
Well-known activist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali made the argument Monday at the National Press Club as security guards stood in the back of the ballroom. An outspoken critic of Islam, Hirsi Ali has been living under a fatwa, a religious ruling or in this case an order to kill, for years.
The Somali native addressed the question “Is Islam a Religion of Tolerance?” to highlight the political dimension of the widely practiced faith.
“I’m frustrated with the continuous belief and, I think, self-delusion that Islam is only a religion,” she said. “Islam is more than a religion. It does have a spiritual dimension … but there is another dimension to Islam — a political dimension.”
In general terms, religious tolerance is understood to be the willingness to recognize and respect the beliefs and practices of others, she noted. But there are different levels of tolerance, she added.
“For instance, if you oppose smoking you may think of yourself as tolerant of smokers but it’s different when you allow a smoker in your house … to smoke,” the now atheist pointed out.
The Prophet Muhammad defined the state of peace and tolerance as a moment when the entire world submits to Allah and embraces Islam, said Hirsi Ali, who fled from her Muslim family and an arranged marriage in her early twenties and sought asylum in the Netherlands.
“That word ‘peace,’ ‘tolerant’ is not defined in Islam as you define it in the West,” she clarified. “It doesn’t mean ceasefire or compromise. That’s temporary.
In Islam, the way to achieve peace is through settlement, jihad, and the institution of sharia (Islamic law), she explained.
And before the state of universal Islamization, “it is the duty of every Muslim male to wage war” — not just by carrying weapons but by preaching and persuading, she added.
“The proposition that Islam is tolerant is not only fallacious but it’s also dangerous,” Hirsi Ali underscored.
[…]
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
La Raza: Arizona Teachers Suing to Restore Racist Program
As an educator, I refused to be complicit in a curriculum that engendered racial hostility, irresponsibly demeaned America’s civil institutions, undermined our public servants, discounted any virtues in Western civilization and taught disdain for American sovereignty. — John Ward, former teacher at Tucson High Magnet School.
Eliminating a radical La Raza (“The Race”) studies program in an Arizona public school district is unconstitutional and restricts free speech, according to a group of teachers who are suing the state to reinstate the taxpayer-financed curriculum that one instructor says “ignited racial hostility.”
The Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American/Raza Studies program was eliminated earlier this year when the state enacted a measure — HB 2281 — to stop funding ethnic studies curriculums that advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government.
In 1998 the district created the Mexican American/Raza Studies division — renamed “Mexican-American Studies” last year to sound less extremist — to promote the “Chicano agenda.”
A few years ago a Hispanic history teacher in the district, John Ward, denounced the curriculum’s biased theme that Mexican-Americans continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class whites.
Kids were taught that the southwestern United States was taken from Mexicans because of the insatiable greed of the Yankee who acquired values from the corrupted ethos of western civilization, the teacher wrote in a newspaper opinion piece obtained by Judicial Watch, a group devoted to investigating government corruption, according to officials at Judicial Watch.
Students also learned that California, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas are really Aztlan, the ancient homeland of the Aztecs, and still rightfully belong to their descendants, people of indigenous Mexican heritage. Also, the former Tucson teacher said, students were told that few Mexicans took advanced high school courses because their “white teachers” didn’t believe they were capable and wanted to prevent them from getting ahead.
The curriculum engendered racial irresponsibly, demeaned America’s civil institutions, undermined public servants, discounted any virtues in western civilization and taught disdain for American sovereignty, according the teacher who blew the whistle on the La Raza program. He also revealed that many of the instructors who taught the courses were not certified to teach.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Serving Two Masters: Shariah Law and the Secular State
By Stanley Fish
A few weeks ago, the Cardozo School of Law mounted a conference marking the 20th anniversary of Employment Division v. Smith (1990), a case in which the Supreme Court asked what happens when a form of behavior demanded by one’s religion runs up against a generally applicable law — a law not targeted at any particular agenda or point of view — that makes the behavior illegal. (The behavior at issue was the ingestion of peyote at a Native American religious ceremony.) The answer the court gave, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing for the majority, was that the religious believer must yield to the law of the state so long as that law was not passed with the intention of curtailing or regulating his or anyone else’s religious practice. (This is exactly John Locke’s view in his “Letter Concerning Toleration.”)
“To make the individual’s obligation to obey . . . a law contingent upon the law’s coincidence with his religious beliefs” would have the effect, Scalia explains, of “permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, ‘to become a law unto himself.’“ And if that were allowed, there would no longer be a single law — universally conceived and applied — but multiple laws each of which was tailored to the doctrines and commands of a particular faith. In order to have law in the strong sense, Scalia is saying, you can have only one. (“No man can serve two masters.”)
The conflict between religious imperatives and the legal obligations one has as a citizen of a secular state — a state that does not take into account the religious affiliations of its citizens when crafting laws — is an old one (Scalia is quoting Reynolds v. United States, 1878); but in recent years it has been felt with increased force as Muslim immigrants to Western secular states evidence a desire to order their affairs, especially domestic affairs, by Shariah law rather than by the supposedly neutral law of a godless liberalism. I say “supposedly” because of the obvious contradiction: how can a law that refuses, on principle, to recognize religious claims be said to be neutral with respect to those claims? Must a devout Muslim (or orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Christian) choose between his or her faith and the letter of the law of the land?
In February 2008, the Right Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, tried in a now-famous lecture to give a nuanced answer to these questions by making what he considered a modest proposal. After asking “what degree of accommodation the laws of the land can and should give to minority communities with their strongly entrenched legal and moral codes,” Williams suggested (and it is a suggestion others had made before him) that in some areas of the law a “supplementary jurisdiction,” deriving from religious law, be recognized by the liberal state, which, rather than either giving up its sovereignty or invoking it peremptorily to still all other voices, agrees to share it in limited areas where “more latitude [would be] given in law to rights and scruples rooted in religious identities.”
Williams proceeded immediately to surround his proposal with cautionary safeguards — “no ‘supplementary’ jurisdiction could have the power to deny access to the rights granted to other citizens or to punish its members for claiming those rights” — but no safeguards would have satisfied his many critics, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who declared roundly that there is only one common law for all of Britain and it is based squarely on “British values.”
Prompted by Williams’s lecture and the responses it provoked, law professors Rex Ahdar and Nicholas Aroney have now put together a volume, to be published in 2011, under the title “Shari’a in the West,” a collection of learned and thoughtful essays by some of the world’s leading scholars of religion and the law. The volume’s central question is stated concisely by Erich Kolig, an anthropologist from New Zealand: “How far can liberal democracy go, both in accommodating minority groups in public policy, and, more profoundly, in granting official legal recognition to their beliefs, customs, practices and worldviews, especially when minority religious conduct and values are not congenial to the majority,” that is, to liberal democracy itself?
This is exactly the question posed by John Rawls in a preface to the second edition of “Political Liberalism,” his magisterial account and defense of liberal political principles: “How is it possible for those affirming a religious doctrine that is based on religious authority . . . also to hold a reasonable political conception that supports a just democratic regime?” The words to stumble on are “reasonable” and “just,” which at once introduce the requirement and indicate how hard, if not impossible, it will be to meet it: “reasonable” means confirming to rational, not religious, principles; “just” means respecting the equality of all, not just male or faithful, individuals.
With these concepts as the baseline of “accommodation,” accommodation is going to fall far short of anything that will satisfy the adherents of a religion that “encompasses all aspects of public and private law, hygiene, and even courtesy and good manners” (A. A. An-Na’im). In liberal thought these areas are the ones in which the individual reigns supreme and the value of individual choice is presupposed; but, as Ann Black explains, “Muslims do not conceptualize Islam in terms of the Westernized sociological categorization of religion which places the individual at the centre of all analyses.”
And so, perhaps predictably, the essays in Shariah in the West tack back and forth between the uneasy alternatives Williams names in his lecture — “an assumption on the religious side that membership of the community . . . is the only significant category,” and on the other side secular government’s assumption of a “monopoly in terms of defining public and political identity.” These assumptions seem to be standing obstacles to the ability of secular Western states to think through the problem presented by growing Muslim populations that are sometimes militant in their demand to be ruled by their own faiths and traditions.
On the one hand, there is the liberal desire to accord one’s fellow human beings the dignity of respecting their deepest beliefs. On the other hand, there is the fear that if those beliefs are allowed their full scope, individual rights and the rule of law may be eroded beyond repair. It would seem, at least on the evidence of most of these essays, that there is simply no way of “finding a viable path that accommodates diversity with equality” (Ayelet Shachar), that is, accommodates tolerance of diverse religious views with an insistence that, in the last analysis, the rights of individuals cannot be trumped by a theological imperative. No one in this volume quite finds the path.
Except perhaps theologian and religious philosopher John Milbank who puts forward, the editors tell us, “the striking argument that only a distinctly Christian polity — not a secular postmodern one — can actually accord Islam the respect it seeks as a religion.” The italicized phrase is key: the respect liberalism can accord Islam (or any other strong religion) is the respect one extends to curiosities, eccentrics, the backward, the unenlightened and the unfortunately deluded. Liberal respect stops short — and this is not a failing of liberalism, but its very essence — of taking religious claims seriously, of considering them as possible alternative ways of ordering not only private but public life.
Christianity, says Milbank, will be more capable of deeply respecting Islam because the two faiths share a commitment to the sacred and to a teleological view of history notably lacking in liberalism (again, this is not a criticism but a definition of liberalism): A “Christian polity can go further in acknowledging the integral worth of a religious group as a group than a secular polity can.”…
| — Hat tip: RC | [Return to headlines] |
The Cultural Breakdown of Britain
[DF — Warning — article from leftist self loathers]
Over the past 13 years the relentless promotion of liberal Western values and multiculturalism in Britain, mirrored by the absence of an internationalist and civil rights counterweight, has handed a gift to the far-right which today it is cashing in.
While the values and multiculturalism promoted by the previous Labour government were always absent of any substance, the English Defence League (EDL) is joined across the world, including with the US Tea Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom and the Swedish Sweden Democrats, in proclaiming that not only has multiculturalism failed but it is a threat to those values which it is now beginning to define.
Putting discussions about who controls the EDL aside, it stands out as being the only movement in England that is galvanising young working-class white people — and fast.
From its beginnings just last year the EDL now claims almost 40,000 members on its Facebook page and has mobilised hundreds of those in three cities over the past two months.
Not only is this the generation a product of “failed” multiculturalism, it is the generation of the “war on terror.”
Exacerbated by domestic policies which have increased segregation in communities along ethnic and religious lines, these young people have rejected the insistence under 13 years of Labour government that Britain does have its own cultural identity, one which is made up of many cultures preserving themselves.
But that discourse been accompanied by a whitewash of why those cultures exist in their various manifestations in Britain in the first place and so its only success has been in protecting the sentiment that Britain’s imperialist past is glorious.
The flipside of that being that the glory depends on perpetuating a dehumanised image of those who resisted that imperialism — those whose cultures, we are assured, are a vital part of Britain’s multicultural identity.
As the war on terror took off, Labour’s funding of Muslim pressure groups in the name of “social cohesion” — vital for the credibility of multicultural identity — was coupled with its dehumanisation of Muslims at home and abroad to justify the imperialist pillage of Middle Eastern and Afghan lands and the oppression of their resisting peoples.
This created hypocrites out of the Establishment in the eyes of the white working-class EDL members — the same demographic targeted for support for the illegal wars and for army recruitment.
After all, for nine years the fear and resentment inducing debate about an enemy and its drive to Islamify the West has been relentless.
In reality working-class people in this country, and indeed across the world, benefit the least from British capitalism and the US-headed imperialism which since World War II has sustained it.
But in the face of an education system which does little to help young people understand social problems in their communities, working-class black, Asian and people from ethnic minorities have cultures from across the Third World that have and are resisting imperialism to readily identify with.
This is on top of cultural currents in Britain that have flourished out of black and Asian resistance to police and far-right brutality.
These cultures open up a range of references for youngsters to understand the imperialist system in which they live.
Meanwhile the lack of any effective political alternative historically to that system in the English belly of empire has left the system able to dictate the culture of white working-class people.
This has left them with little other than cultural references that make them aspire to a place within that system and does nothing to help them understand their social conditions.
So the EDL has filled the void. While the media and politicians tell us extreme Islam is the biggest threat we face, the EDL uses its criticisms of Islam and the Koran to provide a false understanding of those social conditions. But just as importantly, it is also using these criticisms to shape an identity for its members — one which gives attention to people who have hitherto been ignored.
It is an identity defined by everything the EDL sees as a contradiction to Islam. This positioning also enables the EDL to undermine claims that it is a typical, homophobic, neonazi, macho fascist outfit.
So at a rally of approximately 200 members last Sunday in the heart of London on Kensington High Street, the pink union jack and rainbow flag in support of gay rights flew high. And speakers made numerous references in support of women.
Moreover, in spite of leadership claims to be against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, overwhelmingly EDL members support the fight of the troops which they see as part of the fight against the spread of Islamification.
But most significantly, that rally was specifically called near the Israeli embassy to show solidarity with the zionist mission for a pure Jewish state free from Islamic influence.
That solidarity was sealed with the invitation of a “distinguished guest,” activist from the far-right US Tea Party movement and California Senate candidate Rabbi Nachum Shifren.
Before criticising “Hitlerism,” EDL Luton division member Kevin Carroll said: “Israel has a right to defend itself from any aggressor, Islamist or otherwise. And if those two things make me a zionist than so be it, I must be a zionist.”
Arab and Asian people across the country are already paying the greatest price for the EDL emerging as the upholder of radical white working-class identity and are left with no choice but to physically defend themselves.
And in Harrow, Tower Hamlets and Bradford in particular they have successfully defended their communities from the physical threat — albeit with virtually no organisation.
If the EDL would have been similarly embarrassed in Leicester earlier this month it would have been a potentially fatal setback for them.
Nonetheless the conditions are ripe for working-class young people from all backgrounds to be galvanised by any movement that effectively engages with their plight, however shady their intentions.
But the anger of those young people will only be focused into changing those conditions when they are part of a movement which both deals with the deficiencies of an education system that fails to harbour understanding of social problems in our communities, and equips them to deal with those problems.
| — Hat tip: DF | [Return to headlines] |
The United Nations’ Socialist Land Redistribution Scheme
Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, is the author of a report presented on October 20, 2010 to the United Nations General Assembly, which perfectly illustrates the socialist ideology that is all too prevalent amongst United Nations bureaucrats and its so-called ‘experts.’
The report constitutes little more than an assault on free market capitalism. It is an encomium for government-led wealth redistribution.
In his report, Mr. De Schutter blames the free market system for threatening the livelihoods of “peasants, fishers, pastoralists, and indigenous peoples.” He emphasizes “the importance of land redistribution for the realization of the right to food.”
Beyond “the realization of the right to food” itself — which was supposed to define the limit of his area of responsibility — Mr. De Schutter contends that there should also be recognition of universal human rights to “adequate housing,” a “right to work (for landless peasants),” and last, but not least, a human right to land. The right to land, he claims, includes “the right to communal property — a right of the community rather than of the individual” as “an alternative to individual property rights.”
Mr. De Schutter contends that speculation on farmland, the expansion of agrofuels production, and demographic growth in rural areas are all contributing to what he calls “global enclosures” concentrated in the hands of the few. He even blames land ownership concentration on the effect of measures intended to combat global warming that other UN experts and bureaucrats have been championing.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Time to Hold Environmental and Climate Doomsayers to Account
Maurice Strong, master of misinformation and economic destruction
The 1990 Greenpeace Report on Global Warming said, carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere naturally and unnaturally. They define unnatural as anything humans do. It is part of the theme of environmentalism that humans shouldn’t be here or tolerated only if they behave as they are told. The other part of the idea of unnatural is exploited to keep the people enthralled, fearful and therefore controlled. H.L.Mencken’s comment that, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary” applies and is proof of the political nature of events presented, directly or with implication, as unnatural.
The false idea is presented out of context then left uncorrected by lack of follow up. This is especially true if the story is a prediction. We need a media vehicle to analyze the story in context followed by the aftermath. It’s time for a program on which doomsayers who profited financially or politically from false stories and predictions confronted and held to account. Here are some recent stories that proved incorrect.
[…]
Extinction
David Suzuki has spread more environmental misinformation than most. One involved a 2007 cross Canada tour claiming extinctions of 3 species per hour. It’s an artificial number from a theory based on false assumptions proposed by E. O Wilson. He estimated 27,000 species lost per year, which is 3 per hour. Can someone identify them? Pacific Salmon
In 2009 Suzuki claimed “…we have witnessed decades of decline for diverse sockeye populations from the Fraser Watershed, some of which are now on the brink of extinction.”
The 2010 sockeye salmon run was the largest in almost 100 years and Suzuki is silent. He’s too busy on a book tour promoting his false legacy. His real legacy is destroyed economies, lost jobs and hardship for people, anxious children and weakened communities.
Exploiting false data on salmon and extinction is a family legacy because his daughter, a keynote speaker at the 1992 Rio Conference organized by Maurice Strong, master of misinformation and economic destruction, made them the centre of her presentation.
[…]
Polar Bears
Suzuki, Al Gore, and environmental groups have exploited emotions and fears about polar bears. False stories about them drowning, being malnourished and in danger of extinction flooded the media. The ice isn’t melting and polar bear numbers are increasing, but it’s never about facts. To suppress the facts, world polar bear expert Mitch Taylor, who has lived and researched in the high arctic for over 30 years, was told not to attend a meeting in Copenhagen of the Polar Bear Specialist Group, set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission, because he questioned the science of global warming.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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